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Vice President J.D. Vance is emphasizing the need to combat widespread fraud to safeguard taxpayer dollars and ensure vital programs, such as Social Security, serve those who really need them.
On Tuesday morning, the Treasury announced new measures aimed at preventing improper government payments for deceased individuals, thereby reducing waste and fraud.
This new verification system involves scrutinizing 885 million federal payments against updated death records, essentially auditing around $2.7 trillion in total disbursements. As a result, roughly $99 million in payments already flagged for deceased individuals were identified and stopped.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “The Treasury Department has fulfilled an important commitment in President Trump’s initiative to enhance the integrity of the federal payment system by preventing improper payments and fraud before funds are disbursed.” He added that this new safeguard, developed alongside Vice President Vance’s Fraud Elimination Task Force, addresses long-standing issues and guarantees that federal spending reaches its rightful recipients. The Treasury is continuing to modernize its payment systems and bolster protections against fraud, focusing on taxpayer security.
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The initiative is seen as a win for President Donald Trump, taking shape in March 2025 through an Executive Order aimed at protecting taxpayer funds from fraud, waste, and abuse.
Over 4,900 payments to deceased recipients have already been referred back to the initiating federal agency for additional review. The project also relies on the Treasury’s enhanced access to the Social Security Administration’s comprehensive death master file, which identifies potentially ineligible recipients before payments are issued.
This access was initially granted for three years under a pilot program as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. The Treasury predicts that the program could prevent improper payments and yield approximately $330 million in net benefits from 2024 to 2026.
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Congress made this access permanent in February 2026 when they ratified it and President Trump signed it into law, aimed at eliminating unfair payments to deceased individuals, introduced by Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana).
The Treasury is committed to extending its verification efforts across the federal landscape in an ongoing mission to block questionable payments before any taxpayer resources are spent.
Elon Musk had previously taken aim at the excessive number of Social Security recipients aged over 100 when he initiated the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during Trump’s second administration. Notably, the database showed more than 3.9 million people aged between 130 and 139, alongside many others in even older age brackets. Musk humorously suggested that perhaps “Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” on social media in February 2025.
Further updates regarding the Vance-led efforts to eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse are set to be shared during a press conference on Tuesday at 11 a.m., featuring Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, along with leaders from the White House Task Force on Fraud.
