Elon Musk Promises ‘More Social Security’ In Dubious Charm Offensive | EUROtoday

Social Security final week introduced it will quickly disallow over-the-phone id verification for individuals claiming retirement advantages or making checking account adjustments. Retired staff who’re unable to log into the company’s web site will as an alternative must go to a subject workplace to confirm their identities in individual; an inside company memo estimated the change would require hundreds of thousands of extra workplace visits.

The telephone service cutback has prompted a livid response from Democrats and AARP, which stated the coverage needs to be completely rescinded. Social Security’s performing commissioner, Leland Dudek, instructed stakeholders this week that such a change would sometimes take two years to implement. On Wednesday, Dudek introduced it will be postponed for 2 weeks. (Dudek additionally introduced Thursday that obvious subject workplace closures marketed on the DOGE web site wouldn’t occur.)

Dudek stated the fast timeline for brand spanking new telephone protocols had been ordered by the White House; in Thursday’s interview on Fox News, Musk primarily confirmed he was behind the change. As DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi defined that Social Security receives a major proportion of calls from fraudsters making an attempt to redirect retiree advantages to fraudulent accounts, Musk interrupted to elucidate how the telephone fraud works.

“What happens is they call in, they say, they claim to be a retiree and they convince the person, the Social Security person on the phone, to change the where, the where the money is flowing,” Musk stated. “This is happening all day, every day, and then somebody doesn’t receive their Social Security. It’s because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system.”

After the Social Security Administration first allowed beneficiaries to vary their checking account info on-line in 2013, fraudsters stole advantages from greater than 12,000 beneficiaries, in response to a 2019 report by Social Security’s inspector common.

The variety of victims dwindled to only 712 in 2017, then spiked once more in the course of the pandemic. The Social Security Administration instructed the New York Times earlier this month that about 2,000 beneficiaries had their direct deposits misdirected final yr — out of greater than 70 million month-to-month beneficiaries.

Dudek stated final week he estimated his antifraud telephone adjustments would save $100 million yearly, or lower than 0.01% of the company’s annual outlays. In its 2019 report, the inspector common stated that when 12,000 individuals fell sufferer to direct deposit fraud in 2013, the worth of the misdirected advantages was $20 million, of which $11 million was by no means returned.

Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice chairman for presidency affairs, questioned whether or not the telephone adjustments have been definitely worth the financial savings.

“At AARP, we would absolutely support any effort to crack down on fraud and criminals who are stealing money from Social Security,” Sweeney stated in an interview. “But to punish everybody who’s on Social Security by making them jump through hoops in order to collect the benefits they’ve earned is unfair, and it’s unprecedented.”

Sweeney stated the fast rollout of the telephone adjustments may even create alternatives for a unique sort of fraudster, one who calls up seniors posing as a Social Security worker and calls for they fork over private info to be able to adjust to new guidelines.

In response to a query about what number of stolen {dollars} the administration anticipated to get well by stopping fraud, the White House solely burdened that no one would lose advantages.

“With a resounding mandate from the American people, President Trump is moving quickly to fulfill his promise of making the federal government more efficient,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston stated in a press release. “He has promised to protect social security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits.”