Elon Musk's government department, which tries to save money, says it found hundreds of millions of dollars that were lost because of fake unemployment claims.

However, federal investigators had already found what seemed to be the same fraud years before, and it was much bigger at that time.

Last week, DOGE posted on X, the social media site owned by Musk, about a study of unemployment claims since 2020. The study found some strange things: 24,500 people over 115 years old claimed $59 million, 28,000 people aged 1 to 5 got $254 million, and 9,700 people with birthdates in the future received $69 million from the government.

The tweet caused the usual reaction from people who support different sides. Some people didn't believe it, while others were very happy about it. Even Musk reacted, saying that what his team found was "so surprising" that he read it many times before he understood it.

"Those figures are concerning," he said.

Chavez-DeRemer doesn't need to look far. Her department's own office has already reported this kind of fraud. The federal workers who reported it are the same type that DOGE has criticized.

They are trying to make the government look bad by saying it is not good at its job and that they are finding problems the government missed,

The Social Security Act of 1935 made unemployment benefits a federal law. However, it let each state set up its own systems to collect unemployment taxes, handle applications, and give out money.

Even though states usually manage their own unemployment systems, special programs, like the extra benefits from the first Trump administration at the start of COVID, brought more direct help from the federal government and many new people into the system.

Normally, state systems for unemployment money work "very well, not so well, and terribly," says expert Stephen Wandner. During the COVID crisis, when the economy was badly affected and lots of people lost their jobs, he says many systems were even worse.

In March 2020, Trump signed a law to help people who lost their jobs because of COVID-19. However, soon after, many people started using this system to get money dishonestly. About two weeks later, the government warned states that people were using fake identities to claim money they should not receive.

The memo also suggested a way for states to help people whose identity was stolen when someone tried to get unemployment benefits using their name. To keep a record of the fraud but not connect it to people who did nothing wrong, states could create a 'fake claim,' the memo explained.

These false claims meant that checks were sent to very young children and people over 100 years old.

The 2023 memo says that many of the claims were not payments to people over 100 years old. They were actually like fake records of dishonest claims found before.

A spokeswoman for the Labor Department did not answer questions about Musk's claims. The department also did not say how they found the possible fraud or if it was the same as what was already found.

Even though DOGE looked at a longer time period than government investigators had before, it only found $382 million in fake unemployment claims. This amount was much smaller than what the investigators already knew about.

In 2022, the department that deals with jobs said that fraud related to unemployment money during the COVID time was probably more than $45 billion. Later, another government office said the real amount was much bigger, probably between $100 billion and $135 billion.

Amy Traub, who knows a lot about unemployment, said she thought everyone already knew this. She said it had been reported a lot and talked about in many government meetings.

If the new claims about DOGE seem familiar, it's because they are similar to earlier reports about Social Security payments to people who had died or were very old. Those reports were not true.

This means DOGE isn't a perfect way to send messages, even when problems happen, like people lying to get unemployment money.

Jessica Reidl, an expert at a conservative research group, is very focused on stopping the government from wasting money. She has written 600 articles about this topic. She thinks many people are cheating the unemployment system. However, she does not trust the results from DOGE because she believes they have not done their job well and might have acted illegally.

"When DOGE says that very old people who have died are getting a lot of unemployment money, I start to doubt it," Reidl says. "DOGE hasn't been right about things like that before."

Traub said that the rise in unemployment fraud during the pandemic made states start using new security measures. She also wondered why Musk's team was presenting old fraud as if it were new.

When business leaders and economists warn about a possible recession, it's normal to think about unemployment," Traub says. "This is an attack on a very important program and could be an attempt to reduce public support for unemployment benefits when they are needed most.