Billionaire Elon Musk has reiterated his peculiar assertion that droves of centenarians, some supposedly between 100 and 150 years old, are wrongfully receiving government funds, potentially posthumously. The head honcho of Tesla unleashed this odd claim late Sunday night via X.
“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE,” the Silicon Valley heavyweight tweeted, accompanied by what looked like a data snapshot from an Excel file showing various age categories and their corresponding recipients of government cash.
Musk then jested: “Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” along with a pair of chuckling emojis.
His shared table suggested an eyebrow-raising total of over 20 million individuals clocking in at ages well beyond a century, including a staggering 3.9 million purportedly aged between 130-139.
The figures continued to astonish with more than 3.5 million allegedly within the 140-149 age bracket and around 1.3 million claimed to be in the 150-159 tier. While based on the latest available U.S. statistics from 2020, the country’s populace stands at approximately 335 million, and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, those aged 100 and above total more than 80,000.
A battleground formed in the comments section of Musk’s post, with opinions split on whom to believe. One defiant user even challenged Musk directly, declaring that his figures totalled an implausible 394,943,364 – a number that would wildly surpass the nation’s entire population count, reports the Mirror US.
“Yes, there are FAR more ‘eligible’ social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA,” Musk retorted. “This might be the biggest fraud in history.”
“Using your own data… Why are people under the age of retirement included on this list? We have zero through 20-year-olds by the millions on this list,” another person stated. “This is a very confusing presentation of data. I’m not suggesting it’s false or incorrect; I’m just saying it lacks context and is confusing.”
“How do you collect SS at ages 0-9,” a third person queried. “I wanna meet that 360-369 year old fella,” a fourth person joked.
Other users quickly concurred with the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, however, as they believed his data did indicate widespread fraud within the social security system. “This is a massive fraud red flag,” one person declared. “Over 20M ‘people’ listed as 100+ years old in SS database? Time for a serious audit. Either we’ve got immortals gaming the system or some major data integrity issues.”
“This has the potential to be the biggest fraud in US history,” commented a second person. “If DOGE’s numbers are right, $522B-1/3 of ALL spending on Social Security each year-is fraudulent. ”
The tweet from Musk follows his previous comments about the fraud while standing next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. “Just a cursory examination of Social Security and we’ve got people in there that are about 150 years old,” he informed reporters last week. “Now, do you know anyone that’s 150?I don’t,” he went on. “They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records; they’re missing out.”
He further commented, “So, you know, that’s the case where, like, I think they’re probably dead, is my guess, or they should be very famous. One of the two.”
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