Billionaire entrepreneur-turned-government watchdog Elon Musk claims to have uncovered “the biggest fraud in history” after finding that more than 20 million people listed in the Social Security database are over 100 years old—yet somehow still “alive” on paper.

“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk joked in a post on X, alongside a chart showing active Social Security numbers for people supposedly as old as 369 years. He further suggested that there are more ‘eligible’ Social Security numbers than actual U.S. citizens, raising concerns of massive fraud.

According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025

However, government auditors have long known about this issue. A 2023 audit by the Social Security Administration (SSA) found 18.9 million people listed as centenarians, despite only 86,000 actually living in the U.S. at the time. A 2015 audit also uncovered 6.5 million Social Security numbers linked to individuals over 112 years old, even though only 35 people worldwide had ever reached that age.

While Musk’s discovery might sound alarming, the SSA inspector general determined that almost none of these phantom seniors were actually receiving benefits—though thousands of Social Security numbers were likely being misused for identity fraud. A separate report revealed $3.1 billion in earnings falsely reported under stolen Social Security numbers.

Experts believe many numbers belong to long-deceased individuals whose deaths were never properly recorded. Others are used by undocumented immigrants who pay into the system using false identities but never claim benefits.

Alex Nowrasteh, an expert at the Cato Institute, argued that Musk’s findings might actually show that undocumented workers are helping fund Social Security rather than stealing from it.

“By all means, clean up SSA and mark those people as deceased,” Nowrasteh said. “But the cost of doing so is less revenue going into Social Security.”

Social Security isn’t the only federal program guilty of keeping the dead on the payroll. Under President Joe Biden, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation mistakenly sent $127 million in overpayments to a Teamsters pension fund for nearly 3,500 deceased members before the DOJ stepped in to recover the funds.

The first-ever recipient of Social Security, Ida May Fuller, was issued benefits in 1940, eventually collecting $22,888 before her death in 1975. But now, decades later, millions of fictional “seniors” still haunt the Social Security database, adding to growing concerns about fraud, government waste, and identity theft.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)