Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has sent three individuals with experience in private equity and finance to the Social Security Administration, highlighting the focus that President Donald Trump is putting on rooting out waste and fraud in the nation’s social insurance programs.
Among those tapped for the task are Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners, who also served on the board of Tesla Inc. And was an early investor in SpaceX — two of Musk’s companies — as well as Scott Coulter, formerly of Lone Pine Capital, and Michael Russo, formerly of Shift4, according to people familiar with the moves who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them.
Those names, confirmed in agency and court documents, underscore the importance that the Social Security agency has taken as a beachhead for Musk’s government cost-cutting effort.
Trump elevated a mid-level anti-fraud specialist, Leland Dudek, to be Social Security’s acting commissioner last month — skipping over more than 150 higher-ranking supervisors at the agency.
Dudek had cooperated with DOGE, helping to bring Russo and Coulter into the agency, according to a sworn statement filed Friday by Tiffany Flick, the former agency chief of staff who retired when Dudek was promoted.
Russo arrived Feb. 3, and “introduced himself as a DOGE representative to multiple employees on multiple occasions,” Flick said. He now serves as the agency’s chief information officer. Russo also brought on Akash Bobba, a former intern for Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies Inc., to analyze Social Security data.
Bobba’s onboarding was unusual, according to Flick, who said his background check was held up for a few days. She said she received pressure from Russo and Steve Davis, who runs Musk’s Boring Co. And is also working for DOGE, to get Bobba credentials by midnight on Feb. 10. Bobba was sworn in over the phone, “contrary to standard practice,” she said.
Flick said she didn’t know what DOGE was working on, but that it seemed to have something to do with allegations of widespread fraud that she considered to be “invalid.”
A spokesman for the Social Security Administration did not respond to questions about DOGE’s work at the agency. Russo, Gracias, Coulter, Bobba and Davis also did not respond to messages seeking comment.
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Trump has used Social Security as a primary example of what he casts as a government rampant with fraud, waste and abuse, claiming there are people of improbable ages — including millions purportedly over 100 years old — still collecting agency checks.
“I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Now, we’re going to get fraud out of there,” Trump told Fox Business in an interviewed aired on Sunday. “You see where I talk about it all the time? We have people 250 years old and all, tremendous fraud.”
Dudek has repeatedly rebutted that claim. While a database of people who have had Social Security numbers is missing dates of death for millions of records, that doesn’t mean those people appear in a separate database of beneficiaries, he said.
Under Trump, the agency is already undergoing a reorganization, with senior staffers exiting, and job cuts and office reductions in the works — moves which have alarmed Democrats who see them as a threat to a benefits program popular with the American public.
