A U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) volunteer credited President Donald Trump for the agency's success in curbing government waste after the Elon Musk-led team uncovered "jaw-dropping" fraud in the Social Security system.
"None of this would have happened without President Trump," Antonio Gracias said Wednesday. "President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases. He signed an executive order. It's never been done before, where agencies could talk to each other and databases could talk with each other."
"That allowed us to connect all this data, to find these people across the system, across the benefit system, all the way to the voting records. It really took a lot of courage," he continued.
Musk and Gracias revealed over the weekend that millions of noncitizens received Social Security numbers during former President Joe Biden's tenure. The pair shared a chart showing a steady year-over-year increase, reaching more than 2 million in FY 2024, which ended on Sept. 30.
FY23 saw roughly 1 million noncitizens issued Social Security numbers, as did FY25, which began in October and will end in September of this year.
We found that there were just about five-plus million of them that came to the country as illegals, were given various forms of parole or allowing [in] the country, and they got through an automatic system, Social Security numbers, so they could get into our benefit systems," Gracias said.
"And we tracked that through and found that they were on benefit programs," he noted. "And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls, and we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted."
Gracias said that DOGE confirmed 1.3 million individuals who secured a fraudulent Social Security number received Medicare benefits, too.
Gracias spoke about the amount of money the agency has saved American taxpayers as it pertains to Social Security fraud alone.
"It's in the billions," he said. "You saw the fraud on the phone lines itself. That was about $1.5 billion, and I would guess with Social Security already, we're north of $10 billion.
DOGE said last week it had removed approximately 7 million Social Security accounts belonging to people listed as being over 120 years old.
The agency has also found through its audits that the Social Security database included 20 million dead people marked as alive
"None of this would have happened without President Trump," Antonio Gracias said Wednesday. "President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases. He signed an executive order. It's never been done before, where agencies could talk to each other and databases could talk with each other."
"That allowed us to connect all this data, to find these people across the system, across the benefit system, all the way to the voting records. It really took a lot of courage," he continued.
Musk and Gracias revealed over the weekend that millions of noncitizens received Social Security numbers during former President Joe Biden's tenure. The pair shared a chart showing a steady year-over-year increase, reaching more than 2 million in FY 2024, which ended on Sept. 30.
FY23 saw roughly 1 million noncitizens issued Social Security numbers, as did FY25, which began in October and will end in September of this year.
We found that there were just about five-plus million of them that came to the country as illegals, were given various forms of parole or allowing [in] the country, and they got through an automatic system, Social Security numbers, so they could get into our benefit systems," Gracias said.
"And we tracked that through and found that they were on benefit programs," he noted. "And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls, and we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted."
Gracias said that DOGE confirmed 1.3 million individuals who secured a fraudulent Social Security number received Medicare benefits, too.
Gracias spoke about the amount of money the agency has saved American taxpayers as it pertains to Social Security fraud alone.
"It's in the billions," he said. "You saw the fraud on the phone lines itself. That was about $1.5 billion, and I would guess with Social Security already, we're north of $10 billion.
DOGE said last week it had removed approximately 7 million Social Security accounts belonging to people listed as being over 120 years old.
The agency has also found through its audits that the Social Security database included 20 million dead people marked as alive
