Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday spoke at an anti-fraud roundtable with state attorneys general and White House officials, where he told reporters that his team has identified staggering amounts of fraud totaling tens of billions of dollars.
Vance, the Chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the Task Force Vice Chair, held a roundtable on Tuesday with over a dozen State Attorneys General to discuss the Trump Administration’s nationwide crackdown on federal benefits fraud.
After brief remarks from Vance, Ferguson, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Assistant Attorney General for the National Fraud Division Collin McDonald, they held a private meeting with the attorneys general.
Vance opened his remarks by highlighting the work his team has accomplished to date.
“We exposed billions of dollars in benefits that had been stolen from the American people,” he said, revealing the following:
- Over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans
- More than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements
- $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts
- $60 million in student aid fraud
He further told reporters that $135 billion has been stolen since the aftermath of the COVID pandemic.
WATCH:
Vance: One of the things we’ve realized in combating fraud is that the resources of the federal government, while vast, can be supplemented and aided by a lot of the people who know best what’s happening in their states, which is the attorneys general represented here today, and they have a lot of legal resources, they have a lot of prosecutorial resources, and of course they have the desire to prevent fraud as much as we do, and so I appreciate these leaders for being here because we’re going to work together, state and federal government, to try to combat fraud.
I am particularly gratified here that this is not a partisan effort. I believe we have a couple of representatives from the Attorney Generals in Connecticut and Oregon, and as I have said repeatedly, this does not need to be, this should not be a partisan effort. Everybody should care about fraud, everybody should care about rooting out fraud. Everybody should care about saving the American taxpayers money, and importantly, everybody should care about actually protecting the programs that only work and are only properly funded if it’s not— if the money funding those programs isn’t being stolen by fraudsters.
So, let me just recap, for the benefit of our friends in the media, in just two months, we exposed billions of dollars in benefits that had been stolen from the American people. We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection. We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California. We put a six month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers because so many of the newer hospice providers were not actually providing hospice services, but were just focused on fraud. So, we’re going to cut that out for a little bit and try to get to a place where we can actually certify that the people providing hospice services are actually providing those very necessary and important services.
We’ve recover taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the floodgates were open in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts, which were mostly awarded during the last administration, and that has stopped. And finally, we blocked $60 million in student aid fraud that should have gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead we’re going to fraudsters. And I think the theme here of the anti-fraud task force up to this point has really been that we’re protecting two classes of victims here. We’re protecting the American taxpayers, who shouldn’t have their money stolen by fraudsters, and of course we’re protecting the people who need these services. Fraud is not a victimless crime.
This is not somebody who gets to make some money for violating the law, and otherwise it’s not a big deal. This is people who rely on critical services, students who rely on student loan services, sick people who rely on hospice care, a number of small businesses who rely on the availability of these loans, so that they can grow their business and hire people. All of these people, all of our fellow Americans, have been taken advantage by fraudsters, and the task force is here to stop it.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Vance went on to tell a horrifying story about how a fraudster effectively killed a man, neglecting his duties as a Medicaid-reimbursed caretaker while getting rich off the reimbursements. The victim “lived his final moments on this earth neglected, while a fraudster got rich by providing services that he never actually provided,” Vance said.
MORE:
The post WATCH: Vice President JD Vance Says White House Anti-Fraud Task Force Has Identified Tens of Billions in Fraud – At Least $135 billion Stolen Since COVID appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.