DOGE went looking for phone fraud at SSA — and found almost none

After installing anti-fraud checks for benefit claims made over the phone early last month, the Social Security Administration is considering walking back the policy after finding only two cases that had a high probability of being fraudulent.

The anti-fraud tool set up last month after weeks of changes to the agency’s telephone policies has slowed retirement claim processing by 25% and led to a "degradation of public service,” according to an internal May document obtained by Nextgov/FCW that examined potentially cutting the anti-fraud tool for phone claims. 

Under the new policy, the agency found that only two benefit claims out of over 110,000 had a high probability of being fraudulent — and they aren’t guaranteed to be so. Less than 1% of claims were flagged as even potentially fraudulent at all. 

“No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases,” the internal document said. 

The attention to fraud, however, did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend. 

The lags stem from the three-day hold placed on telephone claims in order to run the antifraud claims, a move that “delays payments and benefits to customers, despite an extremely low risk of fraud,” as the document noted. 

When SSA put the policy in place in early April, the agency said it would require people deemed suspicious to go in-person to an office to prove their identity. 

Initially, the anti-fraud algorithm was being run against all phone claims, but SSA later narrowed it only to retirement, survivors and auxiliary claims — not disability claims — after internal pushback, two employees told Nextgov/FCW. SSA uses Transunion and PinDrop for anti-fraud detection on its phone calls, according to one employee.

SSA’s leadership is now considering changing the policy, especially the three-day hold, and potentially making changes around identity proofing writ large, one agency employee told Nextgov/FCW. The agency did not respond to a request for comment. 

The additional slowdown to retirement processing comes as the agency deals with an influx of retirement claims this year that surpasses previous numbers, according to an internal SSA email announcing a sprint to bring that number down. SSA has over 140,000 unprocessed retirement claims that are over 60 days old. 

Announced in April, the anti-fraud check policy for benefit claims made over SSA’s phone lines was one of many changes and reversals the agency announced as DOGE and White House officials made false and misleading claims about fraudsters getting benefits over the phone.

Aram Moghaddassi, a DOGE engineer, notably said during a March 27 interview on Fox News that 40% of phone calls made to SSA to change direct deposit information come from fraudsters. 

The agency itself has said that, in actuality, 40% of direct deposit fraud at the agency is associated with phone calls, not that 40% of all calls regarding changes to bank information are made by fraudsters.

Musk repeated a similar claim that 40% of the agency’s calls were “fraudulent” during a speech in late March.

Vice President J.D. Vance has also repeated this talking point — following it by saying “DOGE has got a lot of work to do” — as well as other, false assertions about impossibly elderly people claiming benefits, something the agency has said is actually a result of a quirk in the system, not old or dead people receiving benefits. President Donald Trump has also repeated this claim about extremely old people getting benefits.

In March, the agency announced that people couldn’t file claims at all over the phone anymore, or use the phone lines to change direct deposit information. 

Only about a week later, SSA changed those claim restrictions to retirement, survivor, and family benefit claims alone, before later allowing all to file over the phone with the anti-fraud checks running on the backend to flag potential fraudsters. 

“The Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in response to the information obtained by Nextgov/FCW about the policy’s implementation.

Warren launched a “Social Security War Room,” with other lawmakers in April to push back against the Trump administration’s work at SSA. 

“Every one of DOGE’s so-called ‘mistakes’ is a backdoor cut to people’s benefits,” she said. “There’s nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed.”

Overall, fraud at SSA is a miniscule problem. Only 0.3% of SSA’s old-age, survivor and disability insurance payments are considered “improper payments” — a category that also covers mistakes, like payments that should’ve been made but were missing a signature. Only a sliver of that 0.3% is due to fraud, according to a recent oversight report. 

The SSA numbers obtained by Nextgov/FCW also relate only to claims made over the phone, not for direct deposit changes made by phone. Limits on changing direct deposit information over the phone still exist.

SSA’s inspector general did recommend that the agency beef up security controls around direct deposit changes in 2012, although direct deposit fraud that happens over the phone is less than 0.0003% of total benefits.

After publication, Leland Dudek, the agency’s former acting commissioner who is now a senior advisor at SSA, told Nextgov/FCW that “in the last 30 days SSA stopped 20k fraudulent attempts” across “all transactions that involve direct deposit, which includes first time claims” across both the phone and internet. The document obtained by Nextgov/FCW referred exclusively to claims made over the phone. The agency didn’t respond to an additional request for comment after Dudek’s statement.

For now, people who want to change their direct deposit information are required to get a one-time code online via their SSA account before they can do so over the phone. 

Otherwise, they have to go into an office — a fact that still worries Kathleen Romig, director of social security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, as it’s estimated that the policy will send millions to SSA offices, which are far away and difficult to get to for many.

Romig wasn’t surprised by how little suspected fraud SSA found in claims made over the phone. 

“It seemed like a solution in search of a problem,” she said. “So many of these policy changes — the proposals, the reversals, the things that SSA has done over these past several months — seem to have been fueled by misinformation from people like Elon Musk.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comments from SSA Senior Advisor Leland Dudek.