The Social Security Administration’s inspector general is investigating a whistleblower report claiming that the former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, took sensitive data and stored it on a thumb drive.

The former DOGE engineer claimed he had access to two highly sensitive agency databases and planned to share that information with his private employer, according to the whistleblower complaint reported by The Washington Post.

If true, the allegations would constitute an unprecedented breach at the agency that handles the data of more than 70 million Americans.

The former employee, who was not named by The Washington Post, worked at the Social Security Administration last year before leaving in October for a job at a government contractor.

He reportedly told colleagues that he had obtained two databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” which might have contained personal data of “more than 500 million living and dead Americans,” according to The Washington Post.

The potentially exposed data included Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names.

The man also reportedly told his colleagues that he previously had unrestricted “God-level” access to the Social Security Administration’s systems.

The complaint alleges that the employee sought help from colleagues to upload the data from the thumb drive to his personal computer. It does not allege whether the was successful in transferring the data to the private company’s system.

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He allegedly told one colleague, who refused to help him because of legal concerns, that he expected a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed illegal, according to The Washington Post.

The Social Security Administration, which is still under the DOGE control, denied the allegations, saying The Washington Post was “desperate for clicks and eager to publish fake news to scare seniors.”

The agency’s inspector general is independent of President Donald Trump’s administration. It has alerted both Congress and the Government Accountability Office, which has been conducting its own audit of DOGE’s access to data, of the complaint.

In August, another whistleblower report filed by the Social Security Administration’s former chief data officer, Charles Borges, claimed that DOGE members put millions of Americans’ data at risk by uploading it to an insecure cloud service.

Another report in April last year also claimed that DOGE potentially compromised personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans stored by the National Labor Relations Board and exposed the agency to Russian cyberattacks.

In January this year, the Trump administration acknowledged DOGE employees were responsible for separate data breaches at the Social Security Administration.

DOGE was established by an executive order on January 20th, 2025, and spearheaded by Musk until the billionaire fell out with Trump and left the following May.

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