“I’m not dead” Elon Musk and his team at DOGE have declared thousands of living Americans dead
Americans that are very much alive are finding out that they’ve been declared dead by the Social Security Administration as DOGE purges database.
Elon Musk has been falsely claiming that millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security benefits prompting “a major cleanup” of Social Security records. Members of the billionaire’s non-official federal agency DOGE have reportedly bypassed strict safeguards to move around 4 million Social Security numbers to the agency’s Death Master File.
However, some very much alive American beneficiaries are finding that they’ve been “killed off,” upending their lives. Rennie Glasgow, a claims technical analyst at SSA, told the Daily Beast DOGE staffers, not sure if they may have made mistakes, sent an email telling staff “If these people come into the office with their identification, you can reinstate them.” That is easier said than done.
“We’re going to be resurrecting a lot of dead people”
Glasgow is preparing to have to resurrect “a lot of dead people” as beneficiaries stop seeing their monthly payments arrive. “We have people who did not receive benefits come in every day with their ID and say, ‘I’m not dead, I’m alive!’” he told the Daily Beast.
The process “to get them back as alive” is a long one which can take around three to four days Glasgow explained. Ending up on the Death Master File may not be physical death but it can feel like it due to the mess it creates for those who suffer it.
“When they mark someone dead on the Social Security record, it stops their life. It stops their car payments, it stops their credit, it stops their ability to do anything,” Glasgow pointed out. “Their identification gets flagged. And most times those things have to go to the payment center.”
When government thinks you’re dead, it makes things hard - and DOGE may make it worse. Musk’s team has moved millions of Social Security numbers into the agency's deaths database, raising the risk of errors, by @MerylKornfield @FedGirlWaPo @hannah_natanson https://t.co/0twTSB1N7H
— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) April 23, 2025
“It wasn’t just unclicking the dead box”
Take for example the case of Richard VanMetter, who like others found out he was “dead” when he tried to make a payment with a credit card. The 76-year-old retired physicist was on holiday in Boca Raton, Florida when his credit card was declined while purchasing a $6 sandwich.
VanMetter told The Washington Post that he called his bank to find out the SSA had mistakenly declared him dead. Not only had that caused his bank account to be closed, but the government stopped his retirement benefits, clawed back the previous check and cancelled his Medicare.
He visited an SSA office where he was vacationing and told the security guard, “Hi, I’m dead.” The reply he got was, “Another one.” He says he was fortunate because he had his passport on him and the office that he visited was responsive and well-staffed.
But the process was laborious, taking over an hour. “It was like she was rebuilding my whole database. It wasn’t just unclicking the dead box,” he related to The Washington Post. Months on and he still isn’t receiving his pension payments. “It has been the bane of my existence,” he said.
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