Showing posts with label whistle blowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whistle blowers. Show all posts

Monday, June 22, 2026

Government Fraud and Corruption, Part 10: Student Financial Aid Fraud In Minnesota, Rigged Contract Bidding Fraud in New York, and More

 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 there is no end to  the corruption and fraud of government programs in the state of Minnesota, much of it ignored and/or encouraged by the governor:


  • A House of Representatives committee has asked  the JD Vance anti-fraud effort to investigate the  accusations  that the Minnesota governor,  Tim Walz, allegedly retaliated against state government whistleblowers.

  • These whistleblowers were trying to tell those in charge of the  massive fraud in the state’s government programs.

  • The  committee  report  was  entitled:  “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion.”

  • The report accused Walz and his  attorney general, Ketih Ellison, of having known  of the massive fraud  as early as 2019 but they did nothing to  stop the  ripping  off of taxpayer dollars.

  • According  to the report: “Whistleblowers within DHS [state Department of Human Services] have alleged that Governor Walz not only knew about this fraud, but that he retaliated against whistleblowers, ‘spen[ding] millions on surveilling staff and hiring private investigator (sic) or law firms to silence staff,. Then Temporary [DHS] Commissioner Shireen Gandhi confirmed in her testimony that DHS used outside entities to investigate DHS staff.”

  • The report maintains that the refusal to investigate and address the fraud resulted in about $300 million being stolen out of a Federal child nutrition  program and  $9 billion in stolen  Medicaid funds.

  • At least 65 Minnesota folks have already been  convicted in the state’s fraud cases.

  • More from the report:  “The state’s consistent failure to act decisively in the face of known fraud allowed brazen criminal schemes to flourish and diverted resources away from the vulnerable populations these programs were intended to serve.” 

  • Walz and  Ellison  have denied knowing about any fraudulent activities despite the  many whistleblowers who have come  forward over the years.

  • And  some of the more  serious  accusations: “Instead of trying to stop widespread fraud, Governor Walz’s administration retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns, going to great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials, diminishing job duties, and threats of surveillance,” 


What a disgusting mess. People stealing taxpayer funds that were intended  to help Americans in need and those in  charge of the program at the  highest level of state government  in  Minnesota allowed it  to happen.  Billions of dollars lost, either because of complicity or incompetence.


2)Fraud is not only done at the street criminal  level, sometimes government officials get into  the fraud act also:


  • The  NewYork governor, Kathy Hochul,  has  allegedly been involved in a rigged government  bidding process.

  • The process was for a huge  Medicaid homecare program.

  • The allegation is that Hochul steered the contract for the program to a preferred  company.

  • The "preferred" company is supposedly Public Partnerships  LLC (PPL) which is a payroll service company.

  • They were hired by the state government of New York  to  manage payments to 250,000  home care  recipients under the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program.

  • This program pays out taxpayer dollars  to friends and family members  who are  supposedly taking care of  very ill  or  disabled friends and family members.

  • A Federal report  accuses two high ranking  members of Hochul’s administration of  serious misconduct in the contracting process.

  • The report also asserts that Hochul was “actively involved” in the awarding  of the contract and that  there was “pressure from the Governor’s Office” in the  awarding  process.

  • Once the contract was  given massive troubles started  with scheduling and quality.

  • According to the Justice Department: “New York’s backroom deal with PPL has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and cast countless Medicaid patients to the curb.” 


Whether it  is in Minnesota or California and now New York, it seems that the abuse of the Medicaid  program is one  of  the great scandals  in the  history of the  country.


3)As always, we seem  to end up in Minnesota:


  • In a new twist to Minnesota fraud, accusations have come to light of corruption relative to colleges in the state.

  • It is possible that  7,700 “ghost” students received $12.5 million in financial  aid and then vanished with the money.

  • The scheme worked  as follows: criminals steal an identity, enroll in a community college, apply for Federal  government  student  financial aid, and then disappear and never  attend classes, “ghost” students..

  • In  one example, at a Minnesota college, a course was opened to  registration. 

  • Within  two minutes, all 50 seats in the course were  filled.

  • However, it turned out that 48 of those registering for the class were bogus,  using the registration to get money.

  • Across 33 Minnesota state colleges, investigators found more than 7,700  suspected ghost  students.

  • Not only did these  ghost students get free money,  by registering for classes they shut out legitimate students from  the courses they wanted.


Walz has to be the most out of touch with  reality politicians in  recent memory. Medicaid fraud, feeding kids program fraud, ghost student fraud, Covid fraud, the list keeps  getting  longer and longer. The  country really dodged a fraud and incompetence  bullet when Walz did not become Vice President. 


Enough for  today: a new type of fraud in Minnesota,  high level fraud in New York, and the House reports on  massive whistle blower suppression  in Minnesota.


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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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Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:




Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Never Ending Government Corruption Part 3

 Far too  often  we have had to review the rampant corruption and  criminal activity that always seems to permeate current government programs.  The American political class is great at putting forth expensive, taxpayer funded programs and horrible when it comes to making sure those programs are efficient, effective,  and criminal  infestation free.

The  first post in this discussion  string can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/12/never-ending-government-corruption-part.html

Unfortunately, these politicians have not gotten any better at doing their job as the following tremendous waste of taxpayer examples prove:

1)And the Somali immigrant fraud activities continue to expand and steal American taxpayer money:

  • We have already discussed the reality that Somali immigrants have been  stealing taxpayer funds in the states of Minnesota and Maine, with the theft known to be at least a billion dollars.

  • And now whistleblowers have come forward to allege that Somali criminal  gangs are also fleecing the Federal  government in  Ohio.

  • Apparently,  Somali immigrants were stealing funds by submitting bills for fake medical  conditions via Medicaid in the state.

  • In one fraud scheme, people claim they are caring for their elderly parents and submit fake medical  care requests for them even  though they did not need the care.

  • Law enforcement authorities investigating the Ohio fraud are claiming that the Ohio scammers were much worse than  the  billion dollars stolen in Minnesota.

Three states so far,  how far does the corruption go and how much is it costing the American taxpayer? And is the  fraud just restricted to Somali immigrants or do other immigrants also have their  own criminal  enterprises underway?

2)And it is  not just Somali immigrants, city employees, or politicians that rip off the taxpayer, as we see in the following criminal story:

  • Stephanie Hockridge was once a respected TV news anchor host in Phoenix.

  • She was recently sentenced to 10 years in Federal  prison for Covid scamming.

  • She supposedly stole tens of millions of dollars from the Covid Paycheck Protection  Program, a program that was supposed to help save American  jobs during the Covid pandemic.

  •  She was also ordered to repay $64 million in restitution for her crime, giving you an idea of how bad the corruption was.

  • She and a partner created a company called Blueacom in 2020 with the alleged purpose to help small businesses get government loans.

  • Instead of helping  other small businesses, they started creating and submitting bogus loan applications, eventually collecting $63 million in bogus loans for companies that did not exist.

  • Her partner accepted a plea deal for his criminal  activities in this matter.

  • She had a very famous and nice career going, having   been nominated for an Emmy, named “Favorite Newscaster" by Arizona Foothills Magazine, and was the TV anchor for the Phoenix ABC affiliate from 2011 to 2016.

Fortunately, this scam was uncovered, and surprise, it did not involve any Somali immigrants! But the stealing of American taxpayer money can happen from any person, any profession, and any level of government, either employees or politicians. To this list we can now add TV news personality criminals.

3)Let’s go back  to Washington and catch the latest news on government failures and taxpayer waste:

  • Mehmet Oz is the  administrator of  the Centers for Medicare and  Medicaid Services.

  • He was recently interviewed and made the following fraud allegation: "We believe there are over 4 million people, alleged people, getting benefits on the Obamacare system who do not exist or weren't supposed to get the benefits."

  • Adding more: "That's a lot of money. Full fare, we're paying for insurance for 4 million people who don't even know they have insurance."

  • He claimed that as a result of these 4 million people are causing “immense fraud in  the system.”

Great, ten years into the Obamacare era and the criminal infestation is in the  millions of bogus customers likely stealing billions of taxpayer dollars.

3)Update: over the past couple of posts we have discussed the reality that Somali criminal  gangs  operating across multiple states have  easily bilked the Federal government and the American taxpayer out of at least a billion  dollars. One of those states was Minnesota where Tom Walz is the governor. We have previously reported that whistle blowers in  the state government of Minnesota had sounded the alarm that fraud was going  on in  that state.

We had assumed that a handful of state employees were sounding the alarm.  We were wrong. According to news reports, hundreds of Minnesota Department of  Human Services have gone public with their experiences on the massive fraud going on in the state.  And yet,  Walz  did  nothing to stop the Somali gang criminal  enterprise.

4)One last example of government program corruption and criminal  infestation, this example from Texas:

  • The Secret Service working with San Antonio police recently busted a criminal network of illegal skimming devices that scammed taxpayer dollars out of the SNAP food stamp process.

  • Bringing down this local Texas criminal  enterprise would prevent scammers from taking almost $18 million in SNAP resources.

  • Nationally, it  is estimated that this type  of operation costs taxpayers over $1 billion a year: "Removing these devices before card numbers can fall into the hands of criminals underscores our commitment to preventing EBT fraud," said Brian Gibson, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's San Antonio Field Office.

It is about time that these types of crackdowns occur but the necessary audit and  criminal  prevention  safeguards  should have  been in place from the very beginning.

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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



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at: