Defrauding the Taxpayer is Far Worse than We Imagined

For decades, I have decried the level of fraud in government programs. I blamed it mostly on the big-government left-wing establishment that showed no interest in properly supervising the various government welfare and grant programs. And there is a reason.

Just as legitimate welfare and other programs distributing taxpayer money tend to operate as bribes in return for political loyalty to the big government crowd — mostly the Democratic Party — illegal largess creates the same partisan loyalty. It is no accident that the massive fraud being uncovered in recent days centers largely – but not exclusively — on jurisdictions with dominant Democrat leadership.

But … even in my most extreme assessment of the scope of the theft, I never imagined numbers like we are seeing today.

The numbers now emerging from the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) reveal a scale of plunder that makes past estimates look quaint. Government-wide improper payments reached an estimated $186 billion in fiscal year 2025 alone, according to the Government Accountability Office. That is not loose change or rounding error. It is a hemorrhaging of taxpayer resources that previous administrations treated with the urgency of a dripping faucet while the basement flooded.

The 2025 and 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedowns alone tell a story of breathtaking audacity. In 2025, authorities charged 324 defendants with schemes involving more than $14.6 billion in intended losses — at the time, the largest such operation in DOJ’s history.

One year later, on June 23, 2026, the 2026 Takedown charged 455 defendants, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, for over $6.5 billion in false claims across 56 federal districts and 45 states and territories.

Fifty state Medicaid Fraud Control Units participated, the most in history. International cooperation produced arrests and returns from Kyrenia in a $3.7 billion catheter scheme; from Estonia in a previously charged $10.6 billion matter; and from the Philippines with the arrest of an FBI Most Wanted fugitive tied to a $1.2 billion telemedicine fraud. That is correct. One person accused of defrauding taxpayer of more than one billion dollars. Authorities seized more than $182 million in cash, luxury vehicles, jewelry, and real estate — including a Ferrari, a Bulgari necklace valued at $865,000, and a $4.6 million beach resort built with fraud proceeds in the Philippines.

Specific schemes read like a catalog of contempt for both patients and taxpayers.

• Fraudsters billed billions for medically unnecessary amniotic allografts applied to hospice patients without infection treatment.
• One Texas nurse practitioner faced charges in a $906 million wound-care scheme that funded luxury vehicles, real estate, and that Philippine resort.
• In Florida, a medical director allegedly ordered unnecessary cardiovascular tests on student athletes, falsifying results and contributing to at least one student’s death from an undetected enlarged heart.
• Hospice operators in California bought information on deceased patients to inflate metrics and keep the billing machine running. Behavioral health providers in Illinois billed more than 500 hours in a single day — an impossibility that somehow escaped notice until the new enforcement wave.
• Opioid diversion schemes involved voicemail refills and the distribution of millions of pills to traffickers, producing overdoses and deaths.
• Ghost services, kickbacks to the homeless for mental health “treatment,” and cardiovascular testing rackets.
• In Minnesota, 15 defendants were charged with more than $90 million in intended losses across seven state-managed Medicaid and social service programs. Prosecutors described it as including the largest autism fraud scheme ever charged by the Department of Justice. Two providers alone allegedly submitted $46.6 million in fraudulent claims by paying kickbacks to parents to bring children to centers, diagnosing autism regardless of medical necessity, and billing for services never provided.
• Broader Minnesota investigations have produced charges against 98 defendants in fraud-related matters, with dozens already convicted.
• One related Housing Stabilization Services program exploded from an expected $2.5 million annual cost to more than $104 million before authorities shut it down. In at least one case, Medicaid was billed for round-the-clock care for a disabled individual who was later found dead while the services supposedly continued.
• The COVID-era Feeding Our Future scandal in the same state offers another window into the previous era’s negligence. More than $250 million — some estimates reach $300 million — was stolen from federal child-nutrition funds intended for low-income children during the pandemic. Ringleader Abdiaziz Shafii Farah received a 28-year prison sentence in August 2025 and was ordered to pay nearly $48 million in restitution. Co-conspirator Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff drew 17.5 years in January 2025. Farah reportedly spent portions of his haul on luxury cars, a custom lakefront mansion, and overseas real estate, including funds sent to build a multi-story apartment complex in Kenya. While hungry children were the supposed beneficiaries on paper, the money bought mansions and foreign proper.
• Even individual COVID tax fraud cases demonstrate the reach. In New Jersey, tax preparer Leon Haynes was sentenced to 12 years in prison after a jury convicted him of seeking more than $170 million in fraudulent COVID-related tax refunds. He was ordered to pay more than $55 million in restitution — the largest such COVID tax relief fraud case tried to date.

The contrast in enforcement in prior years – previous administrations — could not be skarker. Under the previous big-government left-wing policies, oversight was sporadic, enforcement was selective, and political loyalty often trumped accountability. Fraudsters operated with the confidence of insiders at an all-you-can-eat buffet while seniors, disabled citizens, and working families paid the tab through higher taxes and diminished services.

The Trump Justice Department has created a National Fraud Enforcement Division, established a White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, and deployed data analytics, interagency coordination, and international reach that previous administrations never matched. Officials now pursue fugitives to the ends of the earth rather than reserving investigative zeal for political theater.

This is the restoration of basic stewardship. When fraudsters cruise in Ferraris and build Philippine resorts on the backs of phantom wound care and ghost autism diagnoses, the response cannot be another study or wrist-slap settlement. The current administration has shown that aggressive, data-driven prosecution — backed by asset seizures and long prison terms — works. Hundreds of medical professionals, clinic owners, and transnational operators now face the consequences they had long evaded.

The taxpayer has been defrauded on a scale that even a longtime critic of government waste underestimated. The good news is that the looting is finally being confronted with the seriousness it always deserved. Continued vigilance, and sustained political will, can determine whether this new era of accountability becomes the norm or merely a temporary correction before the next wave of grifters returns.

The evidence from the past eighteen months suggests the American people finally have law enforcement on their side rather than on the sidelines. That shift alone may prove more valuable than the billions already recovered or the sentences already imposed.

So, there ‘tis.