The Division of Authorities Effectivity is sifting by way of $1.6 trillion price of Social Safety funds — information that embrace an individual’s title, delivery date and the way a lot they earn — in an anti-fraud effort that has advocates apprehensive the Trump administration may begin denying funds to weak older Individuals.
Particulars on the trouble had been confirmed in a current letter to Congress by performing Social Safety Administrator Lee Dudek and by a number of sources accustomed to the challenge.
Along with combing by way of delicate information, DOGE staffers even have been inquiring in regards to the Social Security Administration’s phone service, sources instructed ABC Information, which a good portion of beneficiaries use to file preliminary claims. DOGE’s inquiries in regards to the phone service have raised issues that it could be planning both to switch the phone service with non-public name facilities or get rid of it as an possibility for submitting claims, sources stated.
“Any American receiving Social Safety advantages will proceed to obtain them. The only mission of DOGE is to determine waste, fraud, and abuse solely,” White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated in a press release supplied to ABC Information on Friday.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk each alluded to the anti-fraud challenge in current public statements, claiming to have already discovered examples of rampant abuse.
“We’re additionally figuring out surprising ranges of incompetence and possible fraud within the Social Safety program for our seniors,” Trump stated in his speech to Congress on Tuesday.
Trump has promised to not reduce this system except proof of fraud is discovered.
Particulars on the anti-fraud challenge although have been murky, together with how DOGE staffers, who’re principally allies of Musk with no expertise on complicated authorities entitlement applications, would outline what quantities to fraud, which is often investigated by inspectors normal on the company.
The SSA didn’t reply to requests for remark.
On this Oct. 14, 2021, file picture, a Social Safety card sits alongside checks from the U.S. Treasury, in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photographs, FILE
“DOGE has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of information of what the info they’re accessing truly means and whether or not it, actually, represents fraud,” stated Lynn Overmann, a senior adviser on the U.S. Digital Service through the Biden administration.
Overmann, the chief director of the Beeck Heart for Social Influence + Innovation at Georgetown College, stated she is apprehensive wrongful fraud accusations will get rid of an important monetary lifeline for the aged, disabled folks and kids who’ve misplaced a father or mother.
“The general public deserves robust privateness protections, not reckless information experiments with their most delicate information,” Overmann stated.
About 69 million folks obtain a Social Safety profit every month, totaling about $1.6 trillion in advantages anticipated this 12 months, in accordance with the company.
Dudek, the performing Social Safety administrator, has defended the trouble in non-public communications as authorized and obligatory, a number of sources instructed ABC Information. He stated steps are being taken to guard privateness.
In a non-public assembly with outdoors teams final Tuesday, Dudek referred to DOGE staffers as “the DOGE children” and stated they might “make errors” however that “we’ve to allow them to see what’s going on at SSA,” in accordance with three individuals who attended the assembly.
Dudek stated they had been being given entry to folks’s names, delivery dates and earnings data however not incapacity data. He additionally famous that the staffers had been granted expedited background checks by the FBI and had been onboarded as company workers.
“I noticed what occurred when DOGE had entry to Treasury information,” Dudek stated, in accordance with one particular person’s detailed notes reviewed by ABC Information. “That’s not occurring at SSA on my watch. It might be catastrophic.”
DOGE’s entry to the Treasury Division’s fee system is tied up within the courts as outdoors teams insisted the staff hadn’t been properly vetted first and did not have authorization.
Dudek’s resolution to grant DOGE entry to his company is now the topic of a separate lawsuit filed by unions and retirees.
White Home Senior Advisor to the President and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk departs the U.S. Capitol, Mar. 5, 2025, in Washington.
Kent Nishimura/Reuters
In a Feb. 25 letter Dudek despatched Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the performing SSA commissioner stated the six folks given entry to the Social Safety Administration’s grasp system, known as the Enterprise Information Warehouse, had been present process background checks.
He stated one in every of them was a “particular authorities worker” whereas the opposite had been “detailees” from different federal companies now assigned to his company. Dudek didn’t title the staff granted entry, citing security issues.
DOGE was created by Trump shortly after taking workplace as a technique to reduce authorities waste, and he put Musk in command of delegating workers to the companies.
Musk has put a few of his prime DOGE lieutenants on the company, in accordance with sources, together with Ethan Shaotran, 22, who’s internally listed as a “chief data officer” on the SSA and is a software program engineer who makes a speciality of synthetic intelligence. He based Spark, an AI scheduling assistant startup that acquired a $100,000 grant from OpenAI in 2024.
Different DOGE representatives listed as chief data officers on the SSA embrace Gautier “Cole” Killian, 24, and Nikhil Rajpal, 30, sources instructed ABC Information.
Marko Elez, can be listed as working on the SSA, sources stated. Elez quickly resigned from DOGE this 12 months following reviews of previous racist social media posts however was reinstated by Musk after receiving help from Vice President J.D. Vance, amongst others. In line with courtroom paperwork, Elez was amongst these granted entry to delicate taxpayer data on the Treasury Division earlier this 12 months.
It was not instantly clear if Shaotran, Killian, Rajpal and Elez had been amongst these with entry to the SSA system.
Dudek stated that in the case of the SSA system, DOGE staffers had been granted “read-only” entry to the huge Social Safety system.
“The entry for these people doesn’t permit for the downloading, copying, transferring, or eradicating information from the company,” he wrote within the letter to Wyden.
Rep. Kweisi Mfume holds an indication in opposition to DOGE alongside fellow Home Democrats throughout a press convention in opposition to the Home Republican’s price range invoice on the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 25, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP through Getty Photographs
Issues that DOGE would possibly mistake reliable funds as fraudulent was evident earlier this week when Trump declared in his speech to Congress that there have been hundreds of thousands of useless folks nonetheless amassing Social Safety checks.
However that is not correct.
In line with a 2023 report by the SSA inspector normal, there are hundreds of thousands of individuals older than 100 included in a separate “grasp demise file,” however “nearly none” of them nonetheless obtain advantages. The company stated fixing the file would value between $5 million and $10 million.
