DOGE has been conducting the cleanup operation for several weeks.
The Department of Government Efficiency said on April 24 that records for millions of recipients aged 120 or older have been updated as part of a “major cleanup” at the Social Security Administration (SSA).
The department has been conducting the cleanup for several weeks as it seeks to crack down on wasteful government spending and fraud. About 11 million social security recipients listed as being aged 120 or older have now been marked as deceased, DOGE stated in a social media post.
Another 1.4 million records are expected to be updated within two weeks, the post stated. DOGE previously reported on March 18 that 3.2 million records had been marked as deceased.
A chart shared by DOGE on Thursday showed that more than 2.7 million records of people aged 120 to 129 have been removed over the past several weeks. More than 3.4 million accounts belonging to individuals aged 130 to 139 were removed, and more than 3.3 million records of individuals aged 140 to 149 were marked as deceased.
Another 1.3 million accounts of people aged 150 to 159 were also removed this month, the chart showed. In total, 10,926,833 accounts were marked as deceased, according to the chart.
The update comes after Elon Musk, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, said in February that millions of deceased individuals were still receiving benefits despite being older than 120.
The tech entrepreneur posted on social media platform X a screenshot of a federal database showing that more than 12 million Social Security recipients were listed as older than 120.
Two of the individuals listed on the database were marked as in the age ranges of 240–249 and 360–369. More than a thousand people on the database were listed as being in the age range of 220–229.
“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to false!” Musk wrote. “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
