Nadia Raymond

The fraud was related to the Death Master file.

Musk was pointing to a problem with it, namely that there were people who were clearly dead who were not in it, people who seemed to be 150 years old, according to other social security databases.

He posted, quote, maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting social security.

He even brought it up in the Oval Office with President Trump before the cameras.

Jeremiah was pissed off because in layman's terms, it's complicated.

It's true that there were some people who appeared to be 150 not marked as dead.

But the Social Security Administration knew that already.

And they knew why.

Sometimes the death of a person born in 1875 or whatever didn't get reported to the SSA.

And without an official death date, that person didn't go on the Death Master files.

Regardless, there was a whole system in place to make sure Social Security payments did not go out to these people.

Because when someone is over 100, the Social Security Administration actually contacts them to make sure they're still alive.

He says some of these hundred plus year olds are happy to have a visitor.

Others are like, go away, of course I'm alive.

And if there's any fraud, anyone taking in a paycheck for a dead relative, the SSA would catch it.

Plus, the SSA had already tried to clean up the Death Master file, specifically chasing down death dates for these 150-plus-year-olds.

But it took a lot of time and resources, and it didn't save the government any money because it's not like the SSA had been sending checks to these dead people.

So, the opposite of efficiency.

But Doge still pressed on.

They wanted Jeremiah's team to mark these apparent 150-year-olds as dead and mark them now.