The world’s richest man and DOGE head, Elon Musk, pointed out fraudulent unemployment claims in the United States, including 24,500 seniors claiming $59 million and 28,000 young children claiming $254 million.
Taking to the social media platform X, Musk wrote, “Your tax 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.”
Musk also shared data from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on unemployment insurance claims.
The post mentioned an initial survey of Unemployment Insurance claims since 2020, which revealed —
– 24, 500 people over 115 years old claimed $59million in benefits
– 28,000 people between 1 and 5 years old claimed $254 million in benefits
– 9,700 people with birth dates over 15 years in the future claimed $69 million in benefits
In one case, someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k.
Netizens react
Social media users gave mixed reactions to Elon Musk’s claims, and some questioned the accuracy of the data.
One of the users commented, “If this is illegal why aren’t we seeing people prosecuted at scale?”
“There’s literally nothing you could say that would shock me anymore. You could tell me we’ve sent $12B to an alien settlement on Mars that was claiming asylum from a competing galaxy and I would’ve believed you,” another added.
“Why do I get the feeling all of this will turn out to be just errors, or not understanding the coding?” one of the users said.
Another took a funny jibe and said, “I can’t believe people live this long in America.”
Role of DOGE
DOGE is an advisory body led by Elon Musk and created by Donald Trump, which aims to significantly reduce federal government costs by cutting spending and jobs.
The department claims that it has saved $150 billion till April 8 via asset sales, contract or lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions. It also claimed to save $931.68 per taxpayer, according to the DOGE website.
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