For years we have written and discussed the massive fraud and wasting of taxpayer wealth that the American political class has allowed to happen. From the halls of Washington DC to local mayor offices, the fraud has probably cost the American taxpayer trillions of dollars over time. Most recently, due mostly to the great journalism of Nick Shirley, we have seen how massive that fraud has been in Minnesota and other states.
1)Let’s start today’s fraud discussion in New York City with reporting by Western Journalism:
The New York Post reported that a $400 million taxpayer funded effort to renovate city schools did not pan out as promised.
The Post called the buildings “ghost” schools even though the official “plan” was to fix up 27 schools for mostly younger students.
The plan was supposed to be executed from 2020 though 2025.
Eventually, parents were told by the former mayor’s staff, Eric Adams, that there were no plans to reopen various schools that were funded for renovations.
When pressed for answers, city administrators offer a variety of excuses why the schools had not been reopened or the renovations on others had not been completed.
All of which leads to the conclusion: $400 million disappeared without the promised benefits, making it a good bet there was massive fraud involved.
2)Let’s go back to Minnesota and the Somali fraud tradition for the latest disgusting bit of defrauding taxpayers:
Probably the most disgusting form of government fraud is when money that was set aside for the neediest in our society are denied access to those funds and help because someone else stole the money.
A Somali immigrant living in Minnesota allegedly ran a fraud scheme that entourage Somali families to sign up their kids for autism services at an organization called Star Autism even though most of them did not suffer from autism.
He paid the parents a kickback if they enrolled their non-autism kids in his business.
The Somali coordinated the fraud with a local medical practitioner to provide fake autism diagnoses.
Obviously, autism treatment was minimal since most of the enrolled kids did not have the disease.
Fortunately, the Somali immigrant, Abdinajib Yussuf, was caught in the act and pleaded guilty to defrauding Medicaid of $6 million.
Oh, Yussuf was not an older seasoned criminal, he is a 22 year old immigrant that stole $6 million.
And fortunately the investigators got lucky since while investigating this scam they discovered another scam, the Smart Therapy Center, that defrauded taxpayers of $14 million.
To add insult to injury, Yussuf wired $200,000 of stolen taxpayer funds to Kenya.
Unbelievable the magnitude of fraud that happened in the state of Minnesota and its inept governor, Tim Walz either ignored it, had no clue what was going on or benefited from the fraud. In any case, he should be ashamed at a minimum or jailed at the most for his incompetence.
3)Let’s take the fraud up a few notches, given what the State Financial Officers Foundation recently announced in a letter to President Trump, when they said that fraud scandals across the country have “resulted in tens of billions of dollars being stolen from American taxpayers,” and that such corruption “shreds the fabric of a nation.”
So financial experts in state governments across the country are saying that the millions stolen in Minnesota are just a small fraction of the billions that have been stolen across the country:
The financial officers’s analysis claims that fraud and waste totals $28 billion a year
For example, the Chief Financial Officer in Florida, Blaise Ingoglia, has already tracked down almost $2 billion in excessive and wasteful spending.
Auditor Allison Ball in Kentucky found that over $836 million was made in corrupt and improper Medicaid payments.
North Carolina auditor, Dave Boliek, uncovered over $41 billion in lapsed salaries for government employees that had been vacant for years.
Utah auditor, Tina Cannon, found over a half a billion dollars in fraud and waste across various state government organizations.
Finally, some honest people in government are finally identifying and hopefully shutting down the massive wasting of taxpayer wealth. Let’s hope that those that stole that wealth finally see the inside of a prison cell.
4)Back to Minnesota: Judicial Watch sued the state government of Minnesota to get records on how taxpayer funds were spent, wasted or stolen, on state government programs associated with the Minnesota department of Children, Youth, and Families. Their lawsuit resulted in Judicial Watch receiving 458 pages of government records.
What they found was quite disturbing: inept, incompetent, and wasteful disrespect for taxpayer wealth. I will not go through the entire set of findings they uncovered, that material is available on their website, but highlights, or lowlights, of the disgusting disrespect of taxpayer dollars include the following random acts of abuse and incompetence:
The Minnesota Child Care Center was disqualified from taxpayer money in 2022 because the center “intentionally gave materially false information on billing forms and/or provided false attendance records.”
In August 2022, Nuna Child Care Center (which shared the same address as Minnesota Child Care Center) was denied taxpayer funding from the Child Care Assistance Program after investigators found “materially false information on billing forms and/or provided false attendance records.”
In both cases, videos proved that no children were arriving at these locations even though the administrators of these locations said that kids had arrived at the time the video surveillance was taken.
These two centers are just the tip of the iceberg in poorly run or criminally run care centers in the state.
These and the others were cited for hundreds of violations including: Failure to comply with background study requirements, failure to comply with requirements related to infant care including bottle labeling, items in a crib with an infant younger than one year of age, and crib safety inspections, failure to keep hazardous items away from children, failure to maintain adequate staff to child ratios, failure to comply with staff training requirements, including orientation, CPR, first aid, annual in-service, and child development and learning, failure to maintain children’s files, failure to maintain personnel records, and failure to comply with handwashing requirements for children.
Amazing that so much taxpayer wealth was spent on so badly managed or criminally managed enterprises in the state. Makes you wonder why so many day care centers were allowed to operate at all and for so long, given the failures mentioned above.
Keep in mind that the above fraud and incompetence was uncovered by Judicial Watch in a single Minnesota state government entity. How much more fraud and wasting of taxpayer wealth existed/still exists in other Minnesota state government organizations?
That will do it for now: criminal fraud and government incompetence from New York to Minnesota to Florida To North Carolina To Utah and beyond. Disgusting and we are likely just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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