Billionaire Elon Musk recently posted a chart on X showing that there are more than 20 million Americans living over 100 years old, including 3.9 million people aged 130-139, more than 3.5 million people aged 140-149, and more than 1.3 million people aged 150-159.
Remarkably, according to the data, there is even one ‘living’ citizen aged 360-369.
“Maybe vampires are real and they’re on social security,” Tesla boss writes.
The US Health and Human Services Administration (SSA) is being criticized by Mr. Musk because according to the data kept by this agency, the number of people in the records is 60 million more than the actual number of people in the total US population.
This means that millions of people who are dead, or may never have existed, are still receiving monthly benefits. In 2024, there will be 68.5 million people receiving benefits from the SSA through retirement, disability, and other payments.
It remains unclear how many of these payments were fraudulent or due to agency errors in verifying the age and eligibility of beneficiaries.
The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is urgently investigating the waste of taxpayer dollars after former President Donald Trump promised to drastically cut federal government spending.
DOGE claims it is “investigating the issue.” According to billionaire Elon Musk’s data sheet, there are over 4.7 million people aged 100-109.
More surprisingly, there is at least one person over 360 years old and another in the system over 240. There are 1,039 people still in the SSA database with ages ranging from 220-229.
“Yes, there are more valid social security numbers than there are actual citizens in the US. This could be the biggest fraud in history,” Musk wrote.
He then added: “There are people on this list who are 150 years old. Do you know anyone who is 150? I don’t. If so, they should be in the Guinness Book of Records.”
Explanation from some experts
While no official evidence has been presented to substantiate this claim, several other theories are being debated.
Computer programmers were quick to point out that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud, but rather was likely the result of a bizarre systemic error in the SSA’s benefits system.
Previously, the system was written primarily in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that still powers the databases of the SSA and many other US government agencies.
Since COBOL does not have a date data type, some implementations use a date encoding system based on a reference date. The most common date is May 20, 1875, the date of the international standards conference in Paris, known as the “Convention du Mètre”.
These systems will default to a reference point when the birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all these entries in 2025 will show an age of 150. That’s just one of the explanations that many believed to be true when the DOGE data was released.
The data Musk released has sparked a heated debate about the transparency and efficiency of the US social security system. However, technology experts have also offered a reasonable explanation for these unusual numbers.
The question is whether this is truly the biggest scam in history or simply a technical glitch in the system? The answer will probably become clearer once DOGE completes its investigation.
