Elon Musk says US govt payment systems ‘inefficient’, alleges ‘potential $100 billion fraud annually’

The world's richest person, Elon Musk took to his social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), to allege that the United States government payments system's inefficiency is potentially leading to “over $100 billion fraud annually”.

Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and part of US President Donald Trump's administration as chief of the Department of Government Efficiency, dubbed “DOGE” made the post early on February 9.

He said DOGE and the US Treasury Department would work to address the issue.

Elon Musk Alleges Potential ‘Fraud’ Exceeding $100 billion Annually

In the long word post, Elon Musk claimed that he was informed “that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number”, calling it “extremely suspicious”.

He added, “When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.”

In another post he added: “The magnitude of the fraud in government payments (your tax dollars being spent) is MUCH higher than you think!”

What is Elon Musk Proposing?

In the post, Elon Musk said that the DOGE team and US Treasury have jointly agreed to do the following:

• Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorisation code. He added that this code is necessary in order to pass financial audits and is frequently left blank, making the process almost impossible.
• That all payments must include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. “Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!” said Musk.
• He also suggested the introduction of a DO-NOT-PAY list of entities, which will comprised of “fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations”.
• “It can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily,” he added.

“The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!” Elon Musk added.