We are going to spend a lot of discussion time in the coming posts to review the massive amount of criminal fraud that has infected government programs for many, many years. The outstanding investigations recently done, and still being done, by independent journalist, Nick Shirley, has started a cascading identification of the numerous fraud instances at all levels of government across the country.
It is unbelievable how many billions of dollars have been wasted and are currently being wasted and siphoned off by all types of criminal activities. And while it is amazing how much taxpayer wealth has been wasted and lost, possibly even more amazing is the reality that through the decades the political class and the government entities they overlook were unable or unwilling to stop the fraud.
1)It seems that in every government program fraud discussion we somehow end up in Minnesota:
The FBI recently raided 22 suspected fraudulent day care centers in the state.
It is believed that billions of taxpayer dollars were given to social service operations that in many cases provided little or no social services to the needy Americans they were supposed to be serving.
These programs ranged from government funded day care centers to food assistance programs to senior care services.
Vice President JD Vance and the FBI also recently announced that they possibly uncovered a bogus Medicaid scheme in Ohio that stole as much as $1 billion.
And rather than helping in uncovering taxpayer frauds, many politicians are actually working to make the identification of fraud harder, not easier, to find and prosecute.
In California, politicians recently passed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” that would make it harder for journalists to investigate and uncover the criminal activity involved in government programs.
This law is obviously a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution and will eventually be killed off but it gives you an idea that rather than helping in identifying fraud, these California lawmakers are looking to cover it up and thus, enable it.
Which raises the obvious question: do these politicians looking to cover up fraud doing it because they are profiting from it?
Washington state politicians are looking to pass the same First Amendment type law to protect criminal fraudsters in that state.
Oregon politicians tried to pass a law that would restrict public access to government meetings and communications which would help cover up fraud in that state.
The good news is that Vance, the FBI, and other government entities are finally fighting back and trying to eliminate government fraud. The bad news is that some politicians at the state level are going the opposite way and covering up the fraud, which again, raises the question of whether they are actually benefitting from the defrauding of the American taxpayer.
2)Florida is one state in which the political class is actually and actively rooting out fraud and corruption in government services:
Apparently south Florida has a long history of government program fraud.
But that is changing as the government in the state has figured out how the Medicaid fraudsters operate: fake/bogus health care clinics are set up in rented office space, they apply to receive government subsidies to provide medical care via Medicaid, they move in and decorate the rented space, neighbors watch the space get used for a week or so, enough time to register with Medicaid for funding, and then the physical operation address is abandoned.
But the schemers continue to bill for phantom medical services that are never provided.
This type of scam has been happening for a long time.
Way back in 2007, the U.S. attorney serving Miami showed an analysis that nearly one third of the randomly selected Medicare business, 481 locations, did not exist physically but were still collecting government checks.
These ghost.phantom medical services companies collected almost a quarter billion dollars in a single year back then but provided absolutely no medical services.
However, the current governor, Ron DeSantis, has said enough is enough: "For far too long, we've relied on a pay and chase model where fraudulent claims are paid first, and then investigated years later. That approach is costly, that approach is inefficient, and ultimately it's not fair to taxpayers."
Under his guidance the state is offering a three step approach for identifying and stopping fraud.
Step One: the state government is partnering with Sentilink, an identity fraud company, to screen potential providers BEFORE they receive a single taxpayer dollar.
Step Two: the state government has frozen new service enrollments in the two worst fraud categories, medical equipment and adult day care providers, until the proper screening is done.
Step Three: every Medicaid provider in Florida will be required to prove they are actually providing legit medical services every 12-24 months or they will be cut off from funding.
These steps appear to be working since in just two years the state has shut down 3,200 companies and clawed back $136 million in funds that these bogus companies had stolen.
Partly as a result of these steps, the state government of Florida has reduced its budget for four straight years, grown its rainy day fund by four fold, and reduced its debt by 50%, things that politicians in Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon should be doing. Instead,they continue to enable the fraud and the wasting of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Maybe they should take the advice of DeSantis: "Buckle up. Some of these guys [bogus medical service companies] that aren't behaving well? They're going to have a lot more to deal with."
3)Sometime the fraud is so easy to spot and yet nothing is done about it, especially in Minnesota:
Senator Joni Ernst identified a potential fraud going on in Minnesota back in a January interview.
According to the Senator, it involves a questionable earmark included in the Federal government budget that was allegedly pushed by Minnesota Congresswoman, Ilhab Omar.
According to Ms. Enest, the earmark request was for more than $1 million in funding for a substance abuse clinic in Minnesota that allegedly shared the same physical address with a Minnesota restaurant.
Her and a fellow Senator, Mike Lee, sent a letter to the Department of Justice requesting an investigation into what looks like what could be a shady operation.
Eventually the earmark of the combo restaurant/clinic was dropped and never got funded, possibly because it was bogus and would be uncovered.
You at least have to give Minnesota credit for this unique potential combination: a restaurant/medical clinic sharing the same address, almost as good as the California combo where a combination burrito stand and autism center shared the same address.
4)Let’s go to a different state for a change and leave Minnesota, at least for a short side trip:
The Open the Books organization obtained Medicaid records from the Centers For Medicare and Medicaid services relative to Massachusetts from 2018 to 2024.
They analyzed non-emergency medical transportation claims from companies operating transportation services, services that cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Their analysis uncovered two fraud schemes operating within this transportation program.
A Waltham, Massachusetts company, JBM Health and Educational Services, was supposed to be providing rides to and from methadone clinics.
But according to Open The Books’ work, the company collected over $770,000 from Medicaid to pay for 16.907 methadone clinic rides that never happened.
Almost 100 of the bogus trips that were billed were for transporting patients that had already died.
Fortunately the leader of this company and scheme was finally arrested in early 2026 but not before the culprit had funneled this Medicaid fraud payments into real estate and investment accounts and had sent some of the taxpayer money to Uganda.
Less than a year later, another bogus Massachusetts transportation company, Instant transportation LLC, was indicted on 17 counts including Medicaid fraud, larceny, patient abuse, identity fraud, money laundering and witness intimidation.
In a five year period, this bogus company had billed the state's Medicaid program over $3 million for transportation services that were never provided.
Thus, in five years just two fraudsters had stolen almost $3.8 million of Medicaid funds without being caught.
The Open The Books analysis showed that just in Massachusetts, the number o f Medicaid funded transportation claims rose a whopping 403%, from 4,417 in 2018 to 22,228 rides in 2023, a jump that should have been a red flag fraud warning signal well before five years expired.
Unbelievable that such massive fraud did not trip warning signals long before two fraudsters were caught providing no service whatsoever and yet collecting millions of dollars.
Fraud in Minnesota and Massachusetts. Protecting the fraudsters in California, Washington and Oregon. At least the Florida political class is finally going after the crooks with some common sense fraud busting precautions.
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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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