DOGE trumpets unemployment fraud that government already found

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! Finance

Associated Press Finance
DOGE trumpets unemployment fraud that government already found

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FILE - Elon Musk speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) · Associated Press Finance · ASSOCIATED PRESS

MATT SEDENSKY
Tue, April 15, 2025 at 3:12 PM EDT 5 min read

NEW YORK (AP) — The latest government waste touted by billionaire Elon Musk's cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency is hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims it purportedly uncovered. ... One problem: Federal investigators already found what appears to be the same fraud, years earlier and on a far greater scale.

In a post last week on X, the social media site Musk owns, DOGE announced “an initial survey of unemployment insurance claims since 2020” found 24,500 people over the age of 115 had claimed $59 million in benefits; 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5 collected $254 million; and 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future garnered $69 million from the government.

The tweet drew a predictable party-line reaction of either skepticism or cheers, including from Musk himself, who said what his team found was “so crazy” he re-read it several times before it sank in. ... “Another incredible discovery,” marveled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who repeated DOGE’s findings to President Donald Trump in a Cabinet meeting last week.

Chavez-DeRemer’s recounting of the alleged fraud, including claims of benefits filed by unborn children, drew laughter in the Cabinet room and a reaction from Trump himself. ... “Those numbers are really bad,” he said. ... But Chavez-DeRemer needn't look further than her own department’s Office of the Inspector General to find such fraud had already been reported by the type of federal workers DOGE has demonized.

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Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/doge-trumpets-unemployment-fraud-government-191228892.html

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I expect two things to come from this:

AP can forget about ever getting back into the White House.

That inspector general will be escorted from his office.

[underpants]

1. More. DOGE doesn't know what it's doing

That same memo offered an option for states trying to protect a person whose identity was stolen to fraudulently collect unemployment benefits. To preserve a record of the fraud but keep innocent people from being linked to it, states could create a “pseudo claim,” the memo advises.

Those “pseudo claims” led to records of toddlers and centenarians getting checks. The Labor Department's inspector general tallied some 4,895 unemployment claims from people over the age of 100 between March 2020 and April 2022, but another departmental memo explained that the filings stemmed from states changing dates of birth to protect people whose identities were used.



Jessica Reidl, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute, is a fiscal conservative who so champions rooting out federal waste she has written 600 articles on the subject. Though she believes unemployment insurance fraud is rife, she has trouble accepting any findings from DOGE, which she says has acted ineffectively and possibly illegally.

“When DOGE says impossibly old dead people are collecting unemployment in huge numbers, I become skeptical,” Reidl says. “DOGE does not have a good track record in that area.”

[Buns_of_Fire]

2. My conclusion: A good part of the waste and inefficiency in government

is the money being spent on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Oh, and add "fraud" and "incompetence" to that. It's the Cybertruck of government agencies.

[twodogsbarking]

3. "Trumpets" how cute.