Elon Musk’s disclosure of planned Social Security fraud arrest troubles top law enforcement officials: Sources
Tech billionaire and senior Trump adviser Elon Musk appeared to boast of advance knowledge of a planned arrest related to alleged Social Security fraud during an appearance on a live stream Monday night promoted to his more than 200 million social media followers, frustrating top law enforcement officials, multiple sources told ABC News.
“Yes. In fact, I believe someone is going to be arrested tomorrow,” Musk said in response to a question about whether U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi would prosecute fraud found within the Social Security system.
Musk made the comments during a live streamed tele-rally in support of conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel.
Musk, discussing the alleged planned arrest, said, “This is someone who actually stole 400,000 social security numbers and personal information from the Social Security database, and was selling social security numbers and all of all the identification information in order for people to basically steal money from Social Security.”
Musk did not say how he came to know about the alleged planned arrest, but sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that Musk was referring to an ongoing federal investigation, and that his public disclosure of the matter disturbed top law enforcement officials with knowledge of the probe.
Previewing an arrest before it takes place would conflict with standard practice intended to protect potentially sensitive law enforcement operations and those involved in carrying them out.
A White House spokesperson referred ABC News to the Justice Department for comment.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Musk, whose government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency has been working inside the Social Security Administration for several weeks, later reiterated, “And yes, we are going to be prosecuting people. The Attorney General is taking action.”
His comments came a day after he held a campaign rally in Wisconsin, where he appeared with longtime ally and former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias, who has also been working with DOGE at the Social Security Administration.
Gracias told the crowd that, amid their review of systems inside the SSA, the team had referred to law enforcement targets for prosecution.
Gracias alleged that they had identified and reported undocumented immigrants improperly receiving Social Security and registering to vote — allegations that ABC News has not verified.
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“The defaults in the system, from Social Security to all of the benefit programs, have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people, and minimum collection. That’s what’s happening. We found 1.3 million of them [undocumented immigrants] already on Medicaid, as an example,” said Gracias.
“We actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records, and we found people here registered to vote in this population, yes, and we found some by sampling that actually did vote, and we have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security investigation service already,” Gracias said.
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ABC NEWS