Elon Musk and the Ministry of Government Agency Declared this week They found something particularly amazing in searching for government government levels: tens of thousands of people demanding unemployment advantages over 115 years old, under the age of 5 or with birth dates in the future.
“Your tax dollars would pay the fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future!” Mr. Musk posted on X, the social media platform. “This is so crazy that I had to read it several times before it drowned.”
He participated in the group’s demand that even had discovered a person with a birth date in the year 2154, which demanded $ 41,000 in unemployment.
This was, in fact, fake people – but in a different way from Mr. Musk seemed to realize. Most likely, his team was likely to discover the fraud that someone else had already discovered.
The case dates back to the early epidemic when millions of Americans rose on unemployment lists in the country in an unprecedented expansion of the safety network. the Emergency aid program It was also yearned during the first term of President Trump’s first -hand. as far as 15 percent of unemployment claims It was fraudulent, and stolen identities are often used.
To maintain the records of this fraud and protect the victims of theft of identity, the US Department of Labor encouraged state agencies that manage the benefits of unemployment Create “Pseudo Pritt records In fact, to link real cases of fraud in their data to make people. The ability of the records was the point. The agencies were looking for a way to track fraud claims while separating them from the identities of innocent people who might one day apply for the advantages of unemployment themselves.
Now four years later, Mr. Musk and his team seem to have found these people. Their allegations about them It was also repeated Warled by Labor Minister Lori Chavez-Romana during the White House cabinet meeting on Thursday.
The cases they mention maybe Do Return to real cases for people who receive fraudulent benefits. But not from this case, these officials said that the wretched government was deceived to clarify the benefits of people who have not yet realized.
“They are trying to say that the federal government was just sitting there, doing nothing to prevent fraud, and” here we will provide today “.” They undermine the belief that federal agencies and states protect taxpayers dollars. “
He and others said that Mr. Musk seems to be sowing lack of confidence without looking at the details of government policies, following a pattern similar to his incursions into social security management. There, it is widely identified and shared on social media data, which seemed to indicate that the agency was giving benefits to millions of dead. After the news outlets and the representation commissioner in the Social Security Department Clear why This was inaccurate, Mr. Musk continued to file the claim. Even later appeared in President Trump’s joint speech to Congress in March.
With unemployment insurance demands, on Friday, the White House referred questions to the Ministry of Labor.
“We are not surprised by the knowledge of the suspected fraud in analyzing the first user interface data in Dog, which matches in many cases similar results from the previous,” said Kortney Barla, spokesman for the Ministry of Labor. “We will continue to search with our topic experts to reach the bottom of this waste and terrible assault.”
Milked 2023 report Determine the allegations that apparently went to young children and doctors. But the Ministry of Labor itself responded to the report at that time These false records are the sameAnd this offends their abuse, risk the provision of the aid program.
Officials say that any interest program should achieve a balance between prevention of fraud and ease of use. The interest with the strict application can exclude qualified persons. Benefits can allow more fraud. In the spring of 2020, Congress was mistaken as well as creating an easy -to -access program when it is temporarily expanded to help unemployment.
“This was a decision made by Congress and President Trump signed that we will focus on obtaining benefits from the door quickly, and that we will cover the largest possible number of people,” said Michelle Evermor, an older colleague at the National Social Insurance Academy.
She said this is the correct call in the past, given how quickly the labor market recovery from the shock of the epidemic. But at first, this choice also led to a lot of fraud (as happened with the advantages of the other epidemic). More handrails were eventually added to the program, and the US Rescue Plan for 2021 invested in helping countries to determine and combat unemployment fraud.
During this time, the Ministry of Labor under the Biden Administration I sent instructions to the countries On how to deal with fraud cases. It was included in the recommendation that the countries can alleviate the damage of the victims of the theft of identity if they “put a false demand record and transfer all the claim information related to the claim of the Antichrist to claim false as soon as the state designs a fraud.”
The New York Times confirmed on Friday that many states have followed this strategy.
“This data was easily available, and it was reported and reviewed at various government levels and departments” for years, “Illinois, Rebecca Cisco, said in a statement. “This is another example of the DOGE report” misunderstanding this data at best, which flagrantly offends this data in the worst case. “
Jennifer Phillips, the former unemployment director of Illinois, said she was concerned that Mr. Musk was directing the audience’s attention to the wrong place. She said that the federal government has missed this fraud, but the United States needs to continue to fight it.
“The fraudsters were in many ways in 2020 a light years ago in that the states were internally in relation to understanding the dark network and how to buy people’s identities,” said Ms. Philips, who is now working with the digital interest network at the Beek Center at Georgetown University. “And this was caught.”