A former staff member from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was “mistakenly” granted the ability to alter a sensitive federal payments system, which could have allowed him to transfer millions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to any entity, according to a new report.
Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former DOGE staffer, gained access to the Treasury Department’s secure system on February 5. Treasury officials confirmed he was granted “read/write” privileges, which meant he could have modified the database. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had previously stated that DOGE staff only had “read-only” access to the system.
The error was revealed in court filings related to a legal battle over a judge’s order that barred political appointees from accessing the Treasury’s payment system. The judge later clarified that Senate-confirmed appointees like Bessent could still access the system.
Joseph Gioeli, a deputy commissioner at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said the department is investigating how Elez gained such access. Although there’s no evidence Elez made any changes to the system, the possibility of him transferring large sums of money remains a concern. The Treasury department used cybersecurity tools to monitor his actions, and a forensic investigation of his activity is ongoing.
Elez, who previously worked for Musk’s SpaceX, resigned from DOGE last week after reports surfaced of racist posts linked to his social media accounts. One post read, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” while another said, “Normalize Indian hate.”
This incident comes as former President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday, expanding DOGE’s power across federal agencies. When Musk was asked about concerns that DOGE’s actions amounted to a “hostile takeover” of the government, he responded, “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get.”
