The spouse of White Home Deputy Chief of Workers Stephen Miller demanded that the performing head of the Social Safety Administration again up claims by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk of huge cellphone fraud on the company.
Former White aide Katie Miller, who exited the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE, final month to work full-time for Musk, ordered performing SSA chief Leland Dudek to publicly repeat claims that 40 % of all calls made to the company’s customer support cellphone line concerned some type of fraud or tried rip-off, based on reporting from The New York Instances.
Miller reportedly instructed Dudek, “The quantity is 40 %,” in a cellphone name on April 1.
“Don’t contradict the president,” she stated. Miller demanded that Dudek toe the road despite the fact that employees on the company tried to right the determine in a memo on April 1, the Instances reported, the identical day Miller made the cellphone name to Dudek.
The false declare that 40 % of all calls to the administration concerned fraud or tried fraud apparently originated from a misinterpretation of knowledge.
The Instances reported that the 40 % quantity is a “distortion of a very completely different statistic” involving calls by purported scammers making an attempt to steal cash by altering checking account data.
The actual statistic is 25 to 30 % of all cellphone calls associated to altering direct deposit accounts are made by potential fraudsters, not 40 % of all calls made to the company. That’s a really completely different quantity. But it’s a part of the claims Musk made earlier this yr as the pinnacle of DOGE for taking a sledgehammer to staffing and making different cuts on the administration, as DOGE scooped up the non-public information of tens of millions of People.
“All through the early months of this Trump presidency, Musk & allies systematically constructed a false narrative of widespread fraud at Social Safety primarily based on misinterpreted information, utilizing their claims to achieve entry to private data on tens of millions of People” – NYT,” New York Instances reporter Journey Gabriel posted on social media.
Nearly 69 million People depend on Social Safety advantages, together with retired and disabled staff and their dependents and survivors. That’s based on the Social Safety Administration, which additionally reviews almost 9 out of 10 folks 65 and older acquired Social Safety advantages as of Dec. 31, 2024.
A overview by the digital information web site Nextgov/FCW reveals that lower than one % of all calls to the Social Safety Administration contain potential fraud
However that didn’t cease MAGA supporters from voicing their outrage on the Instances reporting.
“Individuals with a mind know The NY Instances is just not goal and does no matter it may well to make the Trump administration look dangerous!” an X person wrote.
“Effectively, if the left wing communists at The NY Instances say so… lol,” one other person posted.
Social safety dates again to 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Safety Act into regulation. The laws was a direct response to the devastating hardships and financial poverty of the Nice Despair. The advantages program paid for out of payroll taxes is a crucial supply, and a few instances the one supply, of earnings for tens of millions of older People.
