New Social Security chief refutes claims of deceased people over 100 years old getting checks

People who are listed as over 100 years old in the Social Security system are “not necessarily receiving benefits,” the new head of the agency said Wednesday, contradicting claims that tens of millions of dead people over that age are receiving checks.

Instead, those individuals “are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record,” said Lee Dudek, the new acting Social Security Administration commissioner who was placed in the role by President Trump, in the Feb. 19 statement. 

The clarification comes after Mr. Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk claimed on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200 and even 300 years old are improperly and routinely getting benefits.

Because Social Security records are not public, it’s not possible to independently verify Musk’s claim. However, the Social Security Administration automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old, an agency rule that has been in effect since September 2015. 

Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency is seeking to root out fraud, waste and abuse, issued a slew of posts on his social media platform X on Monday night, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.” 

To be sure, there are instances of overpayments and fraud within the Social Security system. A July 2024 report from Social Security’s inspector general stated that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.

Social Security and COBOL

Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birth dates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. 

The news organization WIRED first reported on the agency’s use of COBOL, a programming language which is more than 60 years old.

Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these individuals were receiving benefits.

The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million.

A July 2023 Social Security OIG report states that “almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments.” 

DOGE at the Social Security Administration

Dudek, who was named acting chief of the Social Security Administration after the resignation of Michelle King, reiterated the agency’s commitment to transparency. The last lines of the statement acknowledged recent reporting about people older than 100 receiving benefits from the agency.

In the statement, Dudek added that the agency’s priority continues to be “paying beneficiaries the right amount at the right time, and providing other critical services people rely on from us.” 

He noted that DOGE personnel “CANNOT make changes to agency systems, benefit payments, or other information. They only have READ access.”

“I am confident that with DOGE’s help and the commitment of our executive team and workforce, that Social Security will continue to deliver for the American people,” Dudek said.

Treasury clawbacks

In early January, the U.S. Treasury clawed back more than $31 million in a variety of federal payments— not just Social Security payments— that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that former Treasury official David Lebryk said was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave the Department of Treasury temporary access to the Social Security Administration’s “Full Death Master File” for three years as part of the omnibus appropriations bill in 2021. The SSA maintains the most complete federal database of individuals who have died, and the file contains more than 142 million records, which go back to 1899, according to the Treasury.

Treasury estimated in January that it would recover more than $215 million during its three-year access period, which runs from December 2023 through 2026.

Chuck Blahous, a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said, “Two cheers for Elon Musk if he can root out and put a stop to improper payments.”

But to pick the places in the federal government where error rates are high, “Social Security would be near the bottom of the list, not near the top,” Blahous said. “Medicaid improper payment rates are quite substantial, and soared after the Medicaid expansion of the ACA.”

“By all means — go after any improper payments that are found, but let’s not pretend that’s where the system’s biggest financial problems are,” he said.

Sita Nataraj Slavov, a professor of public policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said the claims by Musk and Trump will make people think the solutions to the government’s financial problems are simpler than they appear.

“The real concern is that this claim may mislead people into thinking there’s an easy fix to Social Security’s financial problems — that we can somehow restore solvency without making sacrifices through higher taxes or lower benefits,” Slavov said. “This is simply not true.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, referred back to the Social Security’s inspector general report.

“A previous investigation revealed the SSA paid at least $71.8 billion in improper payments,” she said. “The Social Security Administration is now working to find even more waste, fraud, and abuse in the Administration’s whole-of-government effort to protect American taxpayers.”