During a recent rally in support of the losing Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Brad Schimel, Elon Musk claimed that the government was about to arrest a Social Security fraudster. Law enforcement officials were rightfully furious that Musk had disclosed public details about an ongoing investigation, during a political rally.
The truth is that there are always fraud cases under investigation. Musk hasn’t discovered anything new. The Social Security Administration has a robust set of systems in place to detect, prevent and catch fraudsters. In fact, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is weakening those systems and making fraud far more likely.
Social Security fraud is quite rare, partly because the Social Security Administration is so good at detecting it. Fraud represents just 0.00625 percent of all of Social Security’s expenditures, a far lower percentage than found in private sector insurance. Almost all forms of fraud involve the hijacking of benefits or Social Security Numbers from people who quickly notice and report it, resulting in the reversal of the fraud attempt.
Musk’s latest focus appears to be the vanishingly small amount of fraud that is attempted over the agency’s 1-800 number. Allegedly to prevent fraud, DOGE was about to stop letting most beneficiaries prove their identities over the phone to complete a benefit application or change their direct deposit information. Fortunately, pushback by the American people forced a reversal of that decision.
Again, the facts: Social Security receives 80 million calls a year from citizens on its 1-800 number. Musk and Vice President JD Vance have made the absurd claim that 40 percent of those calls — 32 million — are from “fraudsters who steal your direct deposits.” The truth is that only 1 in every 3,100 calls succeeds (for a brief time) at direct deposit fraud. That’s just 0.032 percent of all 1-800 calls. For everyone successful attempt at direct deposit hijacking, five are thwarted.
To address this relatively small amount of fraud compared to the total volume of legitimate calls, Musk’s minions were planning to force millions of additional people a year, many who have limited mobility, to travel in person to a field office. This same group has just pushed out 7,000 Social Security workers, with plans to lay off thousands more. This ensures that offices will be severely understaffed — or closed entirely, which would have forced beneficiaries to travel hundreds of miles and hours away.
Americans, thanks to Musk, were going to be forced off very safe phones to go to already overcrowded field offices. Or, they could have attempted to navigate the Social Security website, where there is more fraud (though still small) and
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