It’s tough to keep track of all the ways in which billionaire Elon Musk has enriched himself with your tax dollars. But that windfall seemingly wasn’t enough for Musk, whose brain-chip company Neuralink reportedly lied on federal forms, falsely calling itself a “small disadvantaged business.”

The outlet Musk Watch unearthed the filing, dated April 24, which was when Musk was still a “special government employee” of the federal government. Hello, DOGE? Here is some apparent fraud and waste for you to discover!

To qualify as a small disadvantaged business, the majority ownership of a company must be held by members of a “socially and economically disadvantaged” group. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, socially disadvantaged people are those “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society.” Economically disadvantaged individuals are those with a net worth of less than $850,000.

As of midday Friday, Musk’s net worth is over $413 billion. He’s a white, straight man and is not subject to any prejudice, which means he meets neither prong of the SDB requirements. 

To be fair, perhaps Musk’s company thought it could claim Musk was suffering ethnic prejudice because he is a white South African, given that both he and Trump believe so fervently that white South Africans are the most persecuted people in existence, basically the only people oppressed enough to get refugee status these days.

This doesn’t appear to be a onetime error, either. Musk Watch found that Neuralink has claimed this same designation in 11 different federal filings since 2017. It isn’t clear if Neuralink has actually received any money from the government via this apparent scam, but that isn’t really the point. The mere act of signing off on the federal forms would be fraud—the exact sort of fraud that the administration has pretended it is rooting out. 

All of this is especially ironic given that Musk otherwise actively scorns diversity efforts. 

Things at Tesla, his electric vehicle company, have allegedly been so racist that last year a California state judge ruled that 6,000 of its Black workers could jointly sue the company as a class because they alleged Tesla had a “pattern or practice” of failing to address and prevent discrimination against Black workers. 

Additionally, under then-President Joe Biden in 2023, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla for allegedly tolerating racist harassment and retaliating against workers who opposed the harassment. It’s unclear what will happen with that suit, but Tesla already got a gift from the Trump administration, which reportedly dropped a Department of Labor investigation into discrimination at the company. 

Musk has also been eager to attack any diversity efforts and has gleefully slashed funding for related initiatives. He turned Twitter into X, a neo-Nazi hangout whose chatbot turned so antisemitic that Musk had to shut it down. This is not a person who believes the government should lend a helping hand to people who have suffered racial, ethnic, or cultural prejudice. 

That said, Neuralink’s reported actions make perfect sense within the paradigm of the Trump administration. In that worldview, the people who actually qualify for the small-disadvantaged-business designation don’t deserve it, because they weren’t chosen on the basis of merit. To them, the real racism is anything that doesn’t reward white people. So why shouldn’t Musk’s company seemingly engage in a little light fraud to get the advantage it believes it so richly deserves?