The federal government just cut off 62-year-old HIV activist Paul Aguilar’s disability payments, but also claims he owes them back $200,000 in benefits they’ve already paid him over the last 11 years.

We knew that under the Trump administration, we would hear some heartbreaking stories of people in need who’ve had their government benefits cut because Elon Musk and his team of underqualified DOGE nepo babies decided to take that money and buy Bitcoin with it or wherever. We did not realize that Trump and Musk would try to claw people’s already-granted government benefits back, and eleven years worth of those benefits at that.

But KGO has the shocking story of nearly 62-year-old HIV-positive AIDS activist Paul Aguilar, who says that the government not only cut off his monthly disability payments, but is demanding $201,079.10 back in benefits they already paid him. Agular has been on disability for HIV since 2005, and has been unable to work in decades.

Aguilar tells KGO he recently received a letter "informing me that there were concerns about my benefits and that they should have actually stopped December 2013, and that I now owed them over $200,000 and I had 30 days to pay that $200,000.”

He is hardly some benefits huckster. Paul Aguilar has been an SF Pride Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal, is active with the HIV Advocacy Network, and serves on the board of directors of Mary’s Place Affordable Housing Corporation. The Examiner ran a profile on Aguilar’s 33-year battle with HIV in 2022, and the director of UCSF’s Gladstone Center for AIDS Research Dr. Monica Gandhi will even vouch for him.

"All I can see and I've been watching his health for a while, is that every single time he should have been getting Social Security, he should have been getting Social Security like he needed that for his health," Dr. Gandhi told KGO.

For now, Aguilar has retained an attorney, is going through the appeals process, and has applied for a waiver. But San Francisco will surely keep an eye on this story of DOGE gone wild.

Related: Thousands Attend ‘Hands Off’ Anti-Trump Protests Across Bay Area, Nationwide [SFist]

Image: UCSF