A whistleblower complaint has sparked a federal investigation into allegations that a former member of a government cost-cutting team said he had access to sensitive Social Security data and planned to use it after moving to a private sector job.The Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog is examining the allegations involving a former software engineer linked to the Department of State Efficiency, also known as DOGE. According to sources cited by The Washington Post, the agency’s inspector general notified members of Congress about the complaint and shared it with the Government Accountability Office, which is conducting a separate audit into DOGE’s access to government data.
DOGE was launched by Tesla CEO Elon Musk after US President Donald Trump asked him to lead an initiative aimed at cutting costs and identifying waste across federal agencies.The complaint states that the former engineer worked for the Social Security Administration last year before joining a government contractor in October. He allegedly told several colleagues that he owned two highly restricted databases containing records on hundreds of millions of Americans, according to the disclosure.
One of the databases was reportedly stored on a thumb drive.The databases mentioned in the complaint are called “Numident” and “Master Death File.” Together they contain records relating to more than 500 million living and deceased Americans, including Social Security numbers, dates and places of birth, details of citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names.According to the disclosure, the engineer told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it in [the company.]”.
The complaint says he planned to remove personal identifiers before uploading the information to the company’s systems.The complaint also alleges that the engineer told another colleague that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if the actions were found to be illegal. This colleague reportedly refused to help upload the data due to legal concerns.The whistleblower filed the complaint with the OIG on January 9 and later updated it on January 26.
The complaint does not indicate that the engineer successfully transferred or uploaded the data.The Washington Post reviewed the complaint and spoke with the whistleblower, who submitted the report anonymously due to fears of retaliation. The newspaper did not name the former DOGE employee or the company involved because the allegations have not been independently confirmed.When contacted by the Social Security Administration and the company earlier this year, they said they had never heard of the complaint before.
After reviewing the matter, both said they found no evidence to support the allegations. The company said it conducted a “thorough” two-day internal investigation and concluded that the accusations were baseless.A lawyer representing the former DOGE member told The Washington Post that his client has denied all alleged wrongdoing.An official familiar with the engineer’s departure from the agency said he returned his government laptop and lost data access privileges when he left the Social Security Administration.Charles Borges, a former data officer at the Social Security Administration, raised concerns, saying: “This is the worst-case scenario ever. There could be one copy or a million copies of it, and we’ll never know now.”
