Vance claimed that 40% of calls to Social Security (SS) are fraudulent, but the Social Security Administration stated that only 40% of direct deposit fraud is associated with calls to change bank information.
The administration is targeting Social Security, a beloved program, due to its significant portion of the federal budget. While the administration claims fraud is a concern, the actual percentage of fraudulent calls is minuscule compared to the total number of calls and benefits paid.
The actual numbers: SS receives about 80 million calls per year. Forty percent would be about 32,000,000 calls, which Vance claimed are fraudulent (actually echoing an earlier statement by Elon Musk).
About 18,000 of those calls are regarding changes to deposit routing, mainly about changes to recipients' bank accounts. Of those, 40% (around 7,000) were found to be attempted fraud, many of which resulted in no loss of money. Seven thousand is in fact 0.9% of all calls, or less than one fortieth of the number claimed by Vance.
Overall, SS estimates its losses to fraud at 0.0025 percent, or about the relative amount Americans toss into that jar of coins in the bedroom.
The article goes on to point out that the error originated with a careless estimate by one of Musk's young DOGE partisans, who, while no doubt very good at coding, is not so good at placing decimal points.
The Post gave Vance's claim Four Pinnochios (of 5) on its truth scale.