DOGE Lists Over $380M in Likely Unemployment Fraud

THE CENTER SQUARE—The Department of Government Efficiency shared several examples of alleged unemployment fraud on its X account Thursday, the latest in its string of examples since President Donald Trump took office. 

DOGE’s “initial survey of Unemployment Insurance claims since 2020” included tens of thousands of claims for hundreds of millions of dollars from people over 115 years old, between 1 and 5 years old, and even some who haven’t yet been born. 

Since 2020, DOGE said it found that “24.5k people over 115 years old claimed $59M in benefits,” as well as “28k people between 1 and 5 years old claimed $254M in benefits,” and “9.7k people with birth dates over 15 years in the future claimed $69M in benefits.”

The post concluded by listing a discovery of claims amounting to $41,000 for someone with a birthday in 2154.

DOGE estimates it has saved Americans $150 billion or about $930 per taxpayer through a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”

DOGE’s work has been controversial, as many have pushed back against the mass terminations of government employees and funding cuts, all done without official backing from Congress, as Trump created the department through an executive order. 

Elon Musk’s role as the public face of the department and its apparent leader while being listed as a “special government employee” has drawn widespread scrutiny as well. As such, he is limited to working 130 days in a year. 

Some have reported that Musk was set to be leaving DOGE soon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to that story on social media.

“Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete,” Leavitt wrote on April 2.

Trump recently told reporters that Musk will leave in a “few months.”

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer shared DOGE’s unemployment claims in a post on X Thursday morning, vowing to catch those behind the fraud. 

“We will catch these thieves and keep working to root out egregious fraud … ” she wrote.

Originally published by The Center Square

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