We are continuing our discussion time 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)One of the most frequently violated government program with fraud is Medicaid. Given what we have already discussed on this topic, over the years probably hundreds of billions of dollars have been defrauded out of the program. But finally, the effort to root out and block fraud in this programs is finally getting underway with the following action one of the major remedies:
Robert Kennedy, Jr., the head of Health and Human Services, recently announced it is blocking the payment of $1 billion of taxpayer funded Medicaid dollars to the two states that we have proven are likely the most fraud infested of all states.
Kennedy: “We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately.”
Specifically, he cited California Governor Gavin Newsom and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, stating that in order for them to continue to get Federal government Medicaid funding “they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”
Kennedy accused the Biden administration of looking the other way as fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars went unchecked.
Until the two states clean up their acts and audit processes to prevent more fraud, they do not get $1 billion from the Federal government.
Minnesota has to clean up 14 trouble areas in their government programs.
California Medicaid spending has been going up twice the national rate so there is a lot of suspicion there also.
I continue to wonder how governors could be so out of touch and inept with the government functions they are supposed to be operating efficiently and effectively.
2)Fortunately, it seems like FINALLY just about every Federal government entity is finally getting its act together and rooting out fraud and criminal activity:
Apparently, the U.S. Treasury Department has instituted a fraud detection system that identifies dead people who are still receiving government dollars.
The new fraud detection system has already found over 4.900 government checks that were associated with dead check receivers.
Fortunately, the payments, worth $99 million, were stopped before they were actually paid out.
Treasury also announced it has rolled out a new government wide payment verification system to stop federal government programs from sending taxpayer dollars to dead folks.
This approach is more effective,, preventing bogus checks from being sent out in the first place, vs. a lot of the current government fraud work that tries to “claw back” bogus or criminal payments after they were paid out.
Hopefully millions if not billions of taxpayer dollars will not erroneously be sent out in the future with this new screening process.
3)Journalist Nick Shirley has to be credited with starting this whole uncovering of incredible wasteful government spending and fraud and he is still at it, this time identifying fraud in New York City, and posting a video of his adventures in uncovering this potentially massive fraud:
His latest videos have exposed the allegedly widespread Medicare fraud in New York City involving elderly Korean and Chinese residents of the city.
Shirley: “Your tax dollars are paying for elderly Koreans and Chinese to play ping pong and do tai chi, while the fraudsters give kickbacks to those who enroll.”
Obviously, the purpose of Medicare funding was NOT to support the playing of ping pong and doing tai chi, it was meant to handle medical situations and payments.
In one example from his fraud video, he goes to a location in Queens New York that is receiving Medicare funding.
He claims that public records show that the facility serves a whopping, and unbelievable, 7,000 clients, for which they had billed Medicare about $1,600 per client, with the conclusion being
that there are not 7,000 people attending one location in Queens to play ping pong and do Tai Chi.
Rather than try to explain all of the other nonsense and fraud he uncovered, go to the following link and see video excerpts of his work:
4)Fraud and incompetence sometimes look a lot alike but whatever they look like, it always ends up wasting taxpayer wealth:
Multhomah County is in Oregon which includes the city of Portland.
Apparently, the county government folks lost track of hundreds of gift cards worth $115,000.
The gift cards were part of a program that was supposed to help homeless drug addicts in the country.
After the cards were “lost,” the Portland mayor, Keith Wilson, allegedly asked neighboring counties to help replace the cards.
Why he thought that other counties would jump in and fund this incompetence is beyond reason.
Making the situation even more inane, Multhomah County chairperson, Vega Pederson, praised the government for its ”good practices” in identifying the screw up.
So, you screw up and then praise yourself for identifying the screw up?
Proving again the political class incompetence and fraud isn't just Washington programs, even local politicians can abuse taxpayer wealth.
5)Let’s go down to Maryland and show that this state is also not able to stop the defrauding of taxpayer programs:
Earlier this year the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits released an analysis that showed the state government had overpaid $807.4 million in unemployment benefits.
Even worse, $760 million of the total amount was deemed not recoverable.
Governor Larry Hogan back in 2020 said there was a “massive, sophisticated criminal enterprise" that was using identity theft to submit for bogus unemployment benefits.
As an example, earlier this year three Maryland residents were sentenced to multi-year prison sentences for stealing multiple victims' identities and then applying for unemployment benefits using the stolen names.
Two Maryland state residents with a Virginia cohort stole more than $300,000 using stolen Social Security numbers to apply for Covid unemployment benefits.
Three Baltimore cousins got six year prison sentences for similar schemes.
Adding insult to injury, the Maryland residents who had their ids stolen and used to defraud are being asked by the state government to repay the money the fraudsters took since the fraudsters are gone but the legal interests are not.
The good news is that Maryland looks to be going after the criminals stealing taxpayer wealth. The bad news: if the governor knew about these types of fraud schemes six years ago, why were government audits and controls not put in place back in 2020 to stop the continuing defrauding? More incompetence, even when the politicians recognize the problem they don't fix the situation they allowed to come forth.
The unending fraud parade continues: unemployment fraud in Maryland, incompetence fraud in Oregon, ping pong and tai chi fraud in New York, and the never-ending Medicaid fraud in Minnesota and California.
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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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