Elon Mossak has repeatedly claimed that the so -called government efficiency project (DOGE) has discovered a widespread government fraud, when 150 -year -olds claim social security benefits.
But Musk has not provided any evidence to support its claims, and experts quickly pointed out that this is likely to be just a multi -year coding language that is the basis of government payment systems.
Musk made his claims at the OVAL Office press conference last week when he claimed that he was a “careful social security examination” and we put people there for 150 years. Now, do you know someone who is 150? I don’t know if they have to be in the Guinness World Records Book … so this is something I think they probably are dead. “
While no evidence has been provided to provide a backup of the claim, it has been reported by the right -wing commentators, primarily on its X platform, as well as significantly by Trump’s pro -media.
Computer programmers quickly claimed that Figure 150 is not evidence of fraud, but a strange result of the social security management system written mainly in the Cobol, a 60 -year programming language that is subjected to SSA databases. . As well as many systems of US government agencies.
Cabul is rarely used today, and so, the staff of young engineers may be unfamiliar with it.
Since the Cobol does not have a type of date, some implementation rely on a system where all dates are coded with a reference point. The most commonly used is on May 20, 1875, as this was an international standard regulation conference in Paris known as the “Du Mètre Convention”.
These systems by default to the reference point when the date of birth is lost or incomplete, meaning that all of these inputs show the age of 150 in 2025.
This has just found one possible explanation for what is said. The Musk can also simply search the SSA website, which explains that since September 2015, the agency has automatically stopped paying profits when anyone reaches the age of 115.
However, Monday morning, musk doubled, and a picture of what he claims to be faces from the “Social Security Database” to X, and wrote: “The number of people in each age bucket with the death field is lied to Is! ”
These figures indicate that more than 10 million people at the age of more than 120 were gathering benefits.
“Maybe the twilight is real and there are many vampires that collect social security,” Mask wrote.
According to SSA’s own website, this musk database has taken about 400 million of the lists, which is more than five times the number of people who receive benefits in 2024. Also significantly more than the total population of the United States.
The fact that the social security system contains millions of people who are dead, probably distinguished from a potential error caused by COBOL, and there is no news. A report written by the SSA Inspector in 2023 shows that 98 % of people 100 years of age or older do not receive any benefits in the social security database. The report added that the database is not updated because it costs a lot to do.
