The Department of Government Efficiency said it has discovered thousands of claims filed by people with fake birth dates.
Elon Musk said on April 9 that “fake people born in the future” were filing fraudulent unemployment benefits, after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) shared the results of a recent survey of unemployment insurance claims.
According to
DOGE, since 2020, 24,500 individuals over the age of 115 have claimed a total of $59 million in unemployment benefits, while 28,000 claimants between the ages of 1 and 5 have received $254 million in benefits.
An additional 9,700 people with birth dates more than 15 years in the future were paid $69 million in benefits. In one case, an individual with a birthdate of 2154 claimed $41,000 in unemployment benefits, DOGE stated on social media platform X.
Commenting on the findings, Musk
wrote that American taxpayers’ dollars were “going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future.”
“This is so crazy that I had to read it several times before it sank in,” he said.
In another
post, the businessman and special government employee stated that “the oldest living American is 114 years old” and that “it is safe to say that anyone 115 or older is collecting ‘unemployment’ due to being dead.”
“There was no sanity check for impossibly young or impossibly old people for unemployment insurance,” he added.
According to the Department of Labor, unemployment insurance
fraud can occur when a claimant knowingly submits false information, continues to collect benefits when knowing they are ineligible, or intentionally fails to report wages or income while collecting full benefits.
All states are required to impose a penalty of no less than 15 percent of the amount of the fraudulent payment, according to the department. Further penalties under state unemployment insurance laws may include criminal prosecution with fines and/or imprisonment, repayment of fraudulently collected benefits, forfeiture of future income tax refunds, and/or permanent loss of eligibility for unemployment compensation.
Unemployment benefit fraud may also be prosecuted by the Department of Justice, according to the Department of Labor.
The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Labor for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
DOGE announced on April 9 the termination of more than 100 “wasteful contracts” worth around $205 million.
According to a DOGE social media
post, agencies cut 108 contracts in total, including one with the Department of Health and Human Services amounting to $14,000 for an “executive transformational leadership training program,” and another with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum for $5.2 million to “provide strategic advisory and assistance to improve and transform current processes and organizational systems.”
Days earlier, the U.S. Coast Guard
said it was terminating what it called an ineffective IT program known as the Coast Guard Logistics Information Management System (CG-LIMS) while praising the work of DOGE.
According to a statement, the Coast Guard will terminate planned acquisition activities to deliver CG-LIMS, which was expected to begin operating in 2027, a move it said will save approximately $32.7 million.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the move as a “win for government efficiency.”
As a special government employee, Musk can only work on government business for
130 days each year. That means he would be leaving at the end of May. Neither he nor the White House has provided an exact date for when he will officially leave the administration.
The businessman
told Fox News in March that he hopes to reduce federal spending by $1 trillion, or roughly 15 percent, by the time the 130-day period is up.
