Millions of "dead" Social Security recipients actually caused by a COBOL coding quirk

[Skye Jacobs]

TL;DR: Rumors have been circulating about millions of deceased individuals allegedly receiving Social Security checks. However, this sensational claim is far from the truth. The real story is a complex interplay between aging technology, government systems, and misinterpretations by younger IT professionals, particularly those in the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The rumors began when Elon Musk claimed that a significant number of Americans over the age of 100 were inappropriately receiving benefits. Musk and other DOGE representatives said they had uncovered "unusual occurrences" during their preliminary review of Social Security. Musk went so far as to assert that individuals as old as 150 were listed as benefit recipients. He later expanded on these claims, stating that over 20 million American centenarians were receiving Social Security payments. Musk shared an image on X of what he described as a spreadsheet from a Social Security database to support his argument.

The real culprit, though, is a programming language that has been the backbone of the Social Security Administration for decades.

Developed in the 1950s, COBOL powers critical functions within the SSA, including processing retirement and disability claims. The administration maintains an impressive 60 million lines of COBOL code.

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

One of COBOL's peculiarities is its lack of a standardized method for handling dates. This limitation has led programmers to devise creative solutions for representing dates in government databases, including the use of placeholder dates for unknown information.

According to Manjeet Rege, a professor of data science and software engineering at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, May 20, 1875, is a commonly used placeholder date. This date marks the beginning of time according to the ISO 8601 time and date standard, chosen for its significance as the anniversary of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures' creation.

This quirk in date representation has resulted in some Social Security applicants being assigned a birthdate of May 20, 1875, when their actual birth date is unknown. Consequently, the system appears to have beneficiaries who are over 149 years old. The situation is further complicated by decades of work by numerous programmers and data entry clerks, leading to inconsistencies and errors in the system.

Despite these errors, the SSA has implemented measures to prevent fraudulent claims. When an individual passes away, funeral homes are required to file a Statement of Death (Form SSA-721).

Additionally, the SSA has been proactively monitoring extremely old citizens for years. A 2023 study revealed that while 18.9 million Social Security number holders were listed as being born in 1920 or earlier without a recorded death date, only 44,000 were actually receiving benefits. Furthermore, since 2015, the SSA has used automated systems that block payments to anyone over 115 years old.

The Social Security Administration is hardly the only government agency using a decades-old programming language. Many critical systems, including those in the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Internal Revenue Service, still rely on COBOL and other legacy software.

The IRS, for instance, uses approximately 160 COBOL applications, including the Individual Master File (IMF) system, which dates back to the early 1960s.

In addition, 45 states and the District of Columbia continue to run COBOL systems. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the limitations of these systems when many unemployment benefit programs, built on COBOL, struggled to handle the sudden surge in claims.

Despite its age, COBOL remains a robust and efficient language for processing large volumes of business data. It excels in data manipulation, batch processing, and maintaining data accuracy and reliability – which is why COBOL is still popular within certain sectors such as banking and insurance.

The challenge lies not in COBOL's capabilities but in the lack of funding to update and maintain government legacy code. While some organizations, like the UK Department for Work and Pensions and the New York Times, have successfully migrated away from mainframe COBOL, the task of modernizing government systems remains daunting. Estimates suggest that between 220 billion and 800 billion lines of COBOL code are still in use today.

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Millions of "dead" Social Security recipients actually caused by a COBOL coding quirk

 

[lonetac]

We all knew that except Elon and his boot licker fan base.

Just another "finding" walked back by the super "genius" Elon.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

There weren't rumors about millions of dead people receiving SS checks. There were millions of dead people not flagged as deceased on the list of SS names. There is a difference. Get it right. There was no confirmation that all those dead people were receiving any payments, it was still being looked into.

****ing media unable to report anything correctly these days and then you get sites like this doubling down on it. I'd like to say I find that surprising, but damn, we've seen how poorly media has covered anything in the past several decades.

 

[BogdanR]

There weren't rumors about millions of dead people receiving SS checks. There were millions of dead people not flagged as deceased on the list of SS names. There is a difference. Get it right. There was no confirmation that all those dead people were receiving any payments, it was still being looked into.

****ing media unable to report anything correctly these days and then you get sites like this doubling down on it. I'd like to say I find that surprising, but damn, we've seen how poorly media has covered anything in the past several decades.

Perhaps statements like “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security” are leading to such “egregious” interpretations?
If Mr. Musk thinks he's funny maybe he should pursue a side gig as a stand up comedian?

 

[sagbobbit]

There weren't rumors about millions of dead people receiving SS checks.

Maybe most provably false statement of all time?

 

[Dr Roboto]

There weren't rumors about millions of dead people receiving SS checks. There were millions of dead people not flagged as deceased on the list of SS names. There is a difference. Get it right. There was no confirmation that all those dead people were receiving any payments, it was still being looked into.

****ing media unable to report anything correctly these days and then you get sites like this doubling down on it. I'd like to say I find that surprising, but damn, we've seen how poorly media has covered anything in the past several decades.

Get your head out of your arse and whatever echo chamber you live in.

"Now, the big thing is, how many of these people got paid? Where are they getting paid? Where are they getting paid? How many of them were getting paid Social Security, because that's --- if that's the case, it's a massive fraud," Trump, indicating shock, told reporters.

On Tuesday, Trump said at a press briefing in Florida that “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receiving Social Security benefits. “They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” Trump said.

“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” he said. He also said that there’s one person in the system listed as 360 years old.

Late Monday, Musk posted a slew of posts on his social media platform X, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” and “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”

 

[SRB]

What slays me is that when anyone finds something obviously wrong and in need of correction in government, the first instinct is to minimize the failure and then vilify whoever brings it up.

Does it really matter if and how many 100+ year old people are getting paid? How about joining everyone else in a call to fix the problems, rather than excuse them.

 

[hahahanoobs]

What slays me is that when anyone finds something obviously wrong and in need of correction in government, the first instinct is to minimize the failure and then vilify whoever brings it up.

Does it really matter if and how many 100+ year old people are getting paid? How about joining everyone else in a call to fix the problems, rather than excuse them.

Contractors say they can fix your roof....
So even if I see them doing fishy things I should just let them keep going, because they are there to fix and not destroy?

Why do we have regulations and oversight committees then?

Trust me , bro was a joke, not reality.

 

[lonetac]

DOGE website just rolled back all the savings they claimed and dropped the amount of savings its getting so much that its now costing us more money than we have saved.

They just secretly changed their website to cover up all the lies they were spreading.

lets talk about fraud!

 

[lonetac]

Contractors say they can fix your roof....
So even if I see them doing fishy things I should just let them keep going, because they are there to fix and not destroy?

Why do we have regulations and oversight committees then?

Trust me , bro was a joke, not reality.

The guy is defending a dude who fired five inspector generals investigating himself.

There is no ability to defend someone like that but here we are.

 

[BogdanR]

At some point repairing the damage DOGE is doing will cost more then the savings brought by it.

This is the consequence of using a sledgehammer or a chainsaw to fix a broken door.

Please note I'm not against reforming the bureaucracy, heck they are not even capable of clearing the snow in the streets without leaving a terrible mess behind.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

According to Manjeet Rege, a professor of data science and software engineering at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, May 20, 1875, is a commonly used placeholder date. This date marks the beginning of time according to the ISO 8601 time and date standard, chosen for its significance as the anniversary of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures' creation.

There is no beginning of time date according to the ISO 8601 standard. The data in the image shows that this might apply to only a fraction of the erroneous data anyways. This is what Wikipedia says about this date:

ISO 8601:2004 established a reference calendar date of 20 May 1875 (the date the Metre Convention was signed), later omitted from ISO 8601-1:2019. Regardless of the reference date, the standard allows Gregorian dates from the introduction of the calendar on 15 October 1582. For earlier (pre-Gregorian) dates, the calendar may be extended before its introduction (the proleptic Gregorian calendar) by explicit agreement of the parties involved.

And this is what an actual ISO 8601 date looks like: 2025-02-26T17:21:37.104Z

It's literally just sortable text of a combination of the date, a separator "T", the time, and timezone if necessary (Z replacing -0800 or whatever the timezone shift is). As a programmer who uses it regularly, I've never even heard of a beginning of time point for ISO 8601 unlike the actually common 1970 and 1900 start points.

The reason for "pre-Gregorian" dates is because the entire calendar was shifted at that time due to too many leap years. It introduced skipping leap year days every 100 years (except every 400 years). The Catholics did this so they could get Easter on the right day, and later other countries started following suit since it followed the solar year most closely.

 

[opckieran]

There are actually people outside of the 150 age bracket on that spreadsheet, so I don't think the issue lies entirely with COBOL.

But please, continue to minimize the efforts of private citizens working to clean up decades of government waste fraud, and abuse. Clearly, the government lost any incentive to do it themselves...

 

[BogdanR]

But please, continue to minimize the efforts of private citizens working to clean up decades of government waste fraud, and abuse. Clearly, the government lost any incentive to do it themselves...

There are two options of cleaning decades of government waste, fraud and abuse:

Option 1:
1. Hire independent competent people from related fields to audit everything including the processes. Analyze the findings, implement comprehensive corrective actions and bring indictments where relevant. Flag the potential issues so the legislative can take protective action. Keep the auditing processes in place and monitor the output for continuous improvement purposes.

Option 2:
2. Hire a bunch of kids with no relevant experience and give them access to everything. Brandish a chainsaw on stage. Indiscriminately hold funds and fire people. Have control of a Social Media outlet where you extensively boast your "findings" for "laughs", political points and adulation of your fan base.

There is absolutely no question the cleaning work needs to be done, I wonder however which one of those two approaches you favour.

 

[koblongata]

We all knew that except Elon and his boot licker fan base.

Just another "finding" walked back by the super "genius" Elon.

Well, he openly admitted he makes mistakes all the time, but he also fixes them fast, it's always the final result that matters, and that's what we want too, fix the government waste ASAP, or we will be bankrupt in no time.

 

[koblongata]

We all knew that except Elon and his boot licker fan base.

Just another "finding" walked back by the super "genius" Elon.

And if it's just some query problem, don't you think it's weird that so far there weren't anyone in the government said anything to clear things up? So only god knows to what extend it's just a query problem and how much money actually got wrongfully sent out, it's just unacceptable. Worse, it could be deliberate.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Get your head out of your arse and whatever echo chamber you live in.

"Now, the big thing is, how many of these people got paid? Where are they getting paid? Where are they getting paid? How many of them were getting paid Social Security, because that's --- if that's the case, it's a massive fraud," Trump, indicating shock, told reporters.

On Tuesday, Trump said at a press briefing in Florida that “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receiving Social Security benefits. “They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” Trump said.

“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” he said. He also said that there’s one person in the system listed as 360 years old.

Late Monday, Musk posted a slew of posts on his social media platform X, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” and “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”

I can find all these quotes you listed, too.

I see that Trump is quoted as saying, “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old”, but he never said they were getting paid.

Elon has never said these millions were getting paid either. He has made remarks ("Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,”) as you've pointed out that maybe vampires are real and he has spoken jokingly about it - which I do believe he shouldn't do. I think it is just in his personality to be a dry-witted, joking person at times and dry humor is hard for a lot of people to pick up on. It can be easy to see where folks now think that all these 120+ year old names on the list are getting paid, but he never actually said they were. He went on to say, “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”

You guys are welcome to infer what you want from what they said, but they haven't said (from what I've seen/read/watched - perhaps it is possible I missed something) that these people listed as alive over 120 years old are having payments sent out to them.

Don't get me wrong, when I first heard them talking about it and saw a list of how many people in each age group, I too thought those were the number of people getting paid. I let the bit of information in front of my eyes lead to believe we were just wastefully sending out checks willy-nilly. Thankfully I paused, went through the information and came to realize that no one said all these people were getting paid, they were clearly listing off how many people are flagged as "alive" and that it was being investigated still.

 

[kiwigraeme]

In my country when we find fraud on the MASSIVE scale Big Balls is finding.
Bird flu scientists, national Archives ( only Trump Library is important )

we bring charges - Not one charge is even talked about,

More FAA employees sacked

So much winning

This is not to find fraud - that is MUSK contracts , what Trump charges security for his golfing

This is to destroy govt to further entrench the ruling class

DOJ is now tasked to go after Trumps opponents and those who hurt his ego - eg James Comer ( who I believed actually helped him win the 2016 elections )
So much winning

No checks and balances on Musk and Bigballs - no security checks - More winning

What are you cheering for -cutting some 93 years old benefit because still showing her 105 year old dead husband.
Do you think dead peoples records automatically deleted on dead - are we you a IT person ???

Really sad to see how gullible the average american is , very sad - your rights, protections, entitlements are being stolen and you cheer wildly , you cheer pumping more CO2 into the air so your grandkids can suffer more heatwaves, droughts, fires, floods , you cheer cuts to Obamacare as your neighbours die in silent desperation

You cheer stopping aid to the worlds poor - as F them America first - that's the devils work

Don't you think you are being played for a fool, so they can take your rights as you cheer orange pickers are deported without due process because they are murderers and rapists - and the are eating the cats and dogs

Really sad to see USA now siding with North Korea, Rusia, Oban , Iran etc and insulting allies who have come and given their young blood to USA in Iraq, Afghanistan etc

 

[BogdanR]

I think it is just in his personality to be a dry-witted, joking person at times and dry humor is hard for a lot of people to pick up on.

Well, his "dry humour" is a lot harder to pick up on if you happen to be fired with a lot of "dry-wit" but not a shred of reason.
So far the so called savings "unearthed" look like being significantly less than the cost of all the damage caused in the process, a process which looks more like "Weird Al" Yankovic using a chainsaw for an appendectomy, than a competent audit.
Something tells me no one will laugh when taxpayers will be left holding the paying end of this sharade.

 

[opckieran]

There are two options of cleaning decades of government waste, fraud and abuse:

Option 1:
1. Hire independent competent people from related fields to audit everything including the processes. Analyze the findings, implement comprehensive corrective actions and bring indictments where relevant. Flag the potential issues so the legislative can take protective action. Keep the auditing processes in place and monitor the output for continuous improvement purposes.

Option 2:
2. Hire a bunch of kids with no relevant experience and give them access to everything. Brandish a chainsaw on stage. Indiscriminately hold funds and fire people. Have control of a Social Media outlet where you extensively boast your "findings" for "laughs", political points and adulation of your fan base.

There is absolutely no question the cleaning work needs to be done, I wonder however which one of those two approaches you favour.

Two problems with your supposition:

First problem,
Option 1 is pure fantasy. I've worked in government for nearly a decade and can tell you, point blank, without a doubt that this option would never actually come to fruition. There would be too much bureaucracy getting in the way of any fantastical "independent" committee (whatever the heck that even entails). They'd be bombarded with thousands of excuses from each agency about why they need to give 1000 people a spoon to dig a ditch instead of hiring an excavator to do the same job (seriously, if you'd seen what I've seen, just how inefficient government is, you'd understand the anaology). Also, no committee in government is ever independent. Somebody or some party will call the shots. So again... puuuuuuure fantasy.

Second problem,
You forgot Option 3:
3. Do absolutely nothing about it for decades, and let corruption become so entrenched that there is almost no chance of anybody cleaning house. <--- Hint: This was us. Therein lies the root of the issue with your response, it being a false dichotomy between Opt. 1 and 2.



So, as someone who has watched the public sector become a corrupt, destructive, and wasteful leviathan, I'll throw every on-fire chainsaw at it I can get my hands on. And we'll survive. Thrive even. Why? Well, it turns out, we don't actually need NEARLY as much government as some would have you believe. Especially not when it decides to send our tax dollars to Ukraine, or to make Iraqi Sesame Street, or to make skittles musicals in Bolivia, or fund pottery-making classes in Morocco, or send BC to Northern Africa, or hand thousands of dollars in benefits to illegals instead of sending that money towards taxpayers afflicted by Hurricane Helene. Yes, please, I'll gladly take a chainsaw to that bullsh!t.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

What slays me is that when anyone finds something obviously wrong and in need of correction in government, the first instinct is to minimize the failure and then vilify whoever brings it up.

Does it really matter if and how many 100+ year old people are getting paid? How about joining everyone else in a call to fix the problems, rather than excuse them.

What slays me is people don't understand you can fix something wrong in an honest, competent, and organized way.

Greatly exaggerating or outright making false claims that leads to inflamatory media headlines does not remotely contribute to solving the problem.

If there are some people improperly getting social security, just say that and work on fixing that. There is no need to make outright false claims about tens or even hundreds of millions of dead people getting social security.

If you made a mistake at your job through an honest mistake, the smart thing for the company to do would be to work with you to fix it. How would you feel if someone started claiming you intentionally made those mistakes at your job because you're trying to sabotage your company and/or trying to steal money?

 

[BogdanR]

Two problems with your supposition:

First problem,
Option 1 is pure fantasy. I've worked in government for nearly a decade and can tell you, point blank, without a doubt that this option would never actually come to fruition. There would be too much bureaucracy getting in the way of any fantastical "independent" committee (whatever the heck that even entails). They'd be bombarded with thousands of excuses from each agency about why they need to give 1000 people a spoon to dig a ditch instead of hiring an excavator to do the same job (seriously, if you'd seen what I've seen, just how inefficient government is, you'd understand the anaology). Also, no committee in government is ever independent. Somebody or some party will call the shots. So again... puuuuuuure fantasy.

Second problem,
You forgot Option 3:
3. Do absolutely nothing about it for decades, and let corruption become so entrenched that there is almost no chance of anybody cleaning house. <--- Hint: This was us. Therein lies the root of the issue with your response, it being a false dichotomy between Opt. 1 and 2.

Yea, I'm sure Option 1 is outright impossible, meaning Mr Musk’s DOGE could not act in a professional way. Yea, right. Why didn't you apply for DOGE then? You seem have a keen, inside view of this wasteful bureaucracy, undoubtedly an asset for any investigation? Certainly that would be a better way to capitalize on your obvious grudge with the government than an obscure comment thread, no?
As a longtime government employee please tell me who will be on the hook when the damage done turns out to be significantly more than the "savings" ? Or better yet, why did you allow such debauchery and fraud happen under your watch? Did you profit from it as well?

So, as someone who has watched the public sector become a corrupt, destructive, and wasteful leviathan, I'll throw every on-fire chainsaw at it I can get my hands on. And we'll survive. Thrive even. Why? Well, it turns out, we don't actually need NEARLY as much government as some would have you believe. Especially not when it decides to send our tax dollars to Ukraine, or to make Iraqi Sesame Street, or to make skittles musicals in Bolivia, or fund pottery-making classes in Morocco, or send BC to Northern Africa, or hand thousands of dollars in benefits to illegals instead of sending that money towards taxpayers afflicted by Hurricane Helene. Yes, please, I'll gladly take a chainsaw to that bullsh!t.

You held on some credibility until this last paragraph which shows absolutely no understanding of how or why the government does some good things and some stupid things. It looks like you were never an actual federal employee but rather played one on TV. Probably in a commercial.

 

[Karlos95]

Let me get this right... They have been paying people who they don't actually know of their real DoB and probably other things if they don't have something as simple as a DoB? Isn't that the first requirement to being seen as eligible to get a SS check?

 

[wiyosaya]

There weren't rumors about millions of dead people receiving SS checks. There were millions of dead people not flagged as deceased on the list of SS names. There is a difference. Get it right. There was no confirmation that all those dead people were receiving any payments, it was still being looked into.

****ing media unable to report anything correctly these days and then you get sites like this doubling down on it. I'd like to say I find that surprising, but damn, we've seen how poorly media has covered anything in the past several decades.

Maybe this will help you get it right https://time.com/7258453/trump-musk-social-security-dead-fraud-fact-check/
But all the righties will probably claim fake news.

This article really should be titled "Once Again, Elon Musk proves to everyone, everywhere that he is no genius, and is really an ignorant twit with a big mouth."

 

[wiyosaya]

At some point repairing the damage DOGE is doing will cost more then the savings brought by it.

This is the consequence of using a sledgehammer or a chainsaw to fix a broken door.

Please note I'm not against reforming the bureaucracy, heck they are not even capable of clearing the snow in the streets without leaving a terrible mess behind.

DOGE (Department of Government Evil) is already costing more than it saves, so much so that it has to deliberately overstate its savings.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates-savings-federal-contracts
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/new...-reveals-the-likely-actual-figure/ar-AA1zFs4f