Tag: corruption

California Legislators Shriek: ‘Stop Nick Shirley!’

Without the second Trump Administration, we would surely not have discovered, and most importantly, acted upon, the fraud being committed around the country, most notably in blue states like Minnesota and California. So much has been discovered so rapidly, President Trump appointed Vice President Vance to head an anti-fraud task force, and the DOJ hired additional prosecutors to handle the dramatically increasing number of cases. Federal officials are suggesting the sheer amount of fraud, discovered and yet to be discovered, is so staggering clawing back that money could balance the federal budget.

Instrumental in exposing sufficient fraud so it could no longer be ignored by local or state officials is independent journalist Nick Shirley, who exposed the infamous “Quality Learing Center” day care fraud in Minneapolis, as well as many less well-known fraudulent day cares. So effective was Shirley, and so quickly did his work anger local fraudsters and state officials, Shirley received so many death threats he apparently decided to give California a try. This was the immediate result: 

Independent journalist Nick Shirley has released a devastating 40-minute investigative video that exposes what appears to be massive waste and potential fraud in California’s hospice, Medi-Cal, and daycare programs. His report, now viewed more than 7.7 million times on X, uncovers over $170 million in questionable billings tied to ghost hospice and daycare operations that show virtually no signs of actually caring for patients or children.

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Graham Platner slams articles over his alleged ‘sexting’ as ‘journalistic malpractice’

Democrat candidate for United States Senator from Maine Graham Platner accused media outlets that had reported on his alleged “sexting” scandal as “journalistic malpractice.”

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, he specifically called out the The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The New York Times (NYT), which had reported on the scandal on Saturday.

“The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer…I’m sorry, that’s frankly journalistic malpractice,” Platner stated.

According to reporting by both outlets, Platner’s wife had told the campaign about messages she had discovered of her husband “sexting” with multiple women, despite the couple having been married since 2023.

Current and former officials working on Platner’s campaign had confirmed the exchanges, according to the NYT. One current official reportedly said the conduct had stopped before the launch of his Senate campaign.

A former campaign senior aide, Genevieve McDonald, claimed that Gertner had reached out in 2025 about her husband’s alleged behavior, the NYT reported.

Per media reports, Gertner talking about feeling betrayed by an unnamed campaign staffer in a statement provided by the Platner campaign.

“I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind — and I am deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy,” Gertner said.

In a Saturday video statement posted to Platner’s social media campaign account, Gertner said she found the willingness to spread gossip “shameful.”

“It makes me really angry, disappointed. And I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on,” she said.

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Massachusetts Sues UnitedHealthcare Over Alleged $100 Million Fraud

Massachusetts sued UnitedHealthcare on May 29, alleging the company defrauded the state’s Medicaid program by making seniors appear sicker than they were to secure higher payments.

The company contracted with MassHealth to provide a Senior Care Options—which combines Medicare and Medicaid benefits into one plan—for seniors aged 65 and older.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly received more than $100 million in fraudulent payments from MassHealth between 2015 and 2025, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell stated in the complaint.

UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, said the complaint is “meritless and doesn’t accurately describe our Senior Care Options program” in ‌a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

The legal complaint alleged UnitedHealthcare inflated payment rates in three ways.

Upcoding

Massachusetts paid UnitedHealthcare a per-member, per-month rate for each senior enrolled in the plan based on UnitedHealthcare’s assessments of the member’s health conditions.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly labeled members as having behavioral health disorders such as depression or anxiety, or substance use disorders to gain higher reimbursement rates, according to the complaint, when the members had no diagnosis or treatment on record for such conditions.

An analysis by the attorney general’s office revealed that nearly 30 percent of UnitedHealthcare’s 2014 through 2024 behavioral health assessments lacked any matching medical claims to support the mental health diagnoses reported to the state.

Keeping Overpayments

The insurer’s internal reviews identified that many members were incorrectly placed in the highest and most expensive level of care despite not qualifying for it, according to the lawsuit.

While the company eventually downgraded these members to lower-paying levels, it allegedly failed to inform the state of the prior errors or return the extra money it had already collected.

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Jill Biden Laughs About Covering for Joe Biden’s Cognitive Decline 

Dr. Jill laughed about covering for Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during her latest interview amid her tour for her book, “View from the East Wing.”

Jill Biden continued to make the media rounds on Monday and sat down with Craig Melvin on the TODAY show to discuss life after the White House and Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.

Dr. Jill shocked the public when she recently claimed that she thought Joe Biden had a stroke during the 2024 presidential debate.

TODAY show host Craig Melvin asked Jill Biden about the moments after Biden finished the debate.

“I wanna say the things that are true, and so I said ‘you answered every question,’” Jill Biden explained.

“That’s a pretty low bar,” Craig Melvin said.

“Well…haha,” Jill Biden said, laughing.

“My mind is racing. What do I say to him? What do I say to him?” Jill Biden said about her husband’s disastrous debate. “I’m his wife. I’ve got to lift him up.

“I’m not going to get out there on the stage and say, ‘Joe, you really screwed that up,’” Jill Biden said.

She continued, “And we have all our supporters there. That’s who we are. I had to support him. I couldn’t come out and really publicly say, ‘Joe, you did a terrible job in that debate.’”

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Indiana Police Misplace More Than $30,000 Seized in Massage Parlor Raids

More than $30,000 in cash seized from two Indiana massage parlors is missing.

Police seized the money in November 2023 as part of a joint state and local raid on two northern Indiana massage parlors—Jade Massage in Winfield and Relax Spa in Crown Point—and associated businesses and houses. Authorities began investigating the spas after allegedly receiving anonymous tips that prostitution took place there.

Four penis massages for an undercover detective later, authorities raided the businesses and seized more than $97,000 in cash, along with a car. Spa owners Guan Yu and Wujiao Liu, a married couple, were arrested. Their case is ongoing—and their cash is missing.

State police are now investigating what happened. Maybe there’s an innocent explanation for the missing cash; this could well come down to carelessness, not corruption. Regardless, this case represents yet another instance of police profiting off sex work criminalization.

The Search for the Missing Cash

Robert Byrd, who was sworn in as Winfield’s town marshal in April 2025, “assumed that the money had been placed in a secure account established through the Winfield Clerk-treasurer’s Office or a local bank,” reports the Post-Tribune.

It wasn’t.

Eventually, Byrd tracked some of the seized cash down to a rented storage locker, where bills and coins were stashed in plastic bins.

But Byrd could locate only $63,473.86 of the $97,014.37 that was taken. $33,540.51 was missing.

Lake County prosecutor Bernard A. Carter has now asked Indiana state police “to thoroughly investigate this matter and to make every effort to recover the missing funds.” The state police agreed.

The fact that it took some sleuthing for Byrd to discover where the money was stored is itself incredible. Evidence is supposed to be well-tracked and well-documented. And cash seized during an investigation could eventually need to be returned (remember, no one has yet been convicted in this case).

And if this turns out to be more than just sloppy police work? That wouldn’t exactly be surprising, given the perverse incentives and ample opportunities for corruption that massage parlor prostitution cases present.

The Massage Parlor Raid Racket  

Anonymous tips about sexual services being offered along with massages can be used to justify months of undercover visits from law enforcement agents seeking massages. (Later, they will say the masseuses could be trafficking victims—which, if true, would make their months of visits without intervention especially cruel.) And any offer of sex acts with massages can be used to justify raids.

Asian massage parlors tend to be cash-heavy businesses, so there’s often plenty of cash around to seize—and, unlike when you seize money from bank accounts, no definitive record trail. The workers and owners at these businesses are often immigrants, for whom language barriers and other considerations could make it harder to fight back. And if police throw a “human trafficking” allegation in there, no mater how unsubstantiated, everyone just shrugs at whatever happens to those arrested and pats police on the back for a job well done.

Missing money aside, the Winfield case is a fine indictment of how so many massage parlor raid cases operate.

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CBC report failed to inform readers that “tribunal” on residential schools is symbolic

The CBC is standing by its reporting on a self-described human rights tribunal that is “indicting” the Canadian government for alleged abuses and “genocide” in the residential school system, despite failing to note that the group’s lead prosecutor has a suspended law licence and that the organization has no legal authority in Canada.

The article, written by CBC reporter Joy SpearChief-Morris, profiles an activist group known as the “Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal” and its “trial” of Canada’s residential school system.

The report states that “seven international judges” would be “hearing evidence” during the proceeding as part of an investigation into missing Indigenous children and alleged “unmarked burials” associated with residential schools.

The hearing comes five years after the reported discovery of potential unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that a preliminary investigation had identified what were believed to be the remains of 215 children who attended the school.

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Dirty Trick Alert: The REAL Reason Why the (Latest) Graham Platner Scandal Broke Now — and Not in October

Exactly one month before Election Day 2025, National Review broke a major scandal about Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for attorney general: Jones, it seems, had fantasized about murdering his political enemies — along with their young children.

Jones’ blood-soaked fantasies weren’t anonymously posted on Reddit. There were no pseudonyms; no GOP detective work was necessary. Remarkably, Jones sent his texts directly to a Republican legislator named Carrie Coyner.

From National Review:

On August 8, 2022, a Republican state legislator received a disturbing string of early-morning text messages from a former colleague, Jay Jones, this year’s Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general.

[…]

“If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson’s memory, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.”

Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time,” prompting pushback from his former colleague:

Jones: Three people, two bullets

Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot

Gilbert gets two bullets to the head

Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time

Coyner: Jay

Please stop

Jones: Lol

Ok, ok

Coyner: It really bothers me when you talk about hurting people or wishing death on them

It isn’t ok

No matter who they are

This meant that Coyner had been sitting on this scandal since August of 2022. She could’ve released Jones’ damning text messages whenever she wanted!

Yet she patiently waited until exactly one month before the 2025 election.

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Federal Agents Arrest Karen Bass-Linked “Peace Ambassador” — Convicted Murderer and Active 18th Street Gang Member Was Being Paid with Taxpayer Dollars Through NGO Program

Federal law enforcement just exposed another jaw-dropping failure of Los Angeles’ radical “reimagine public safety” experiment under Mayor Karen Bass.

Michael Angel Alvarez, 41, aka “Diablo,” a convicted first-degree murderer and alleged active 18th Street gang member, was arrested by federal agents after being paid over $58,000 last year by a city-contracted nonprofit to serve as a so-called “Peace Ambassador.”

The arrest went down on May 18 near MacArthur Park. LAPD officers responding to a stolen vehicle call detained Alvarez. He reportedly told them he worked for Mayor Karen Bass’s Crisis Response Team (“CRT”).

Take a look at the absolute insanity of this operation, according to the DOJ:

  • The Suspect: A hardened gangster convicted of first-degree murder in 2002. He was sentenced to 50 years to life but was cut loose early by California’s broken justice system. Federal authorities state he is still an active 18th Street gang member who was recently caught on jailhouse phone calls plotting to assault people who broke gang rules.
  • The Scam: Alvarez didn’t just sneak onto the payroll. He was funded through “Healing Urban Barrios” (HUB), a Lincoln Heights-based Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that secured a lucrative contract with the city.
  • The Taxpayer Cost: Under the guise of a “Peace Ambassador program”—which the city website laughably describes as an initiative to “prevent violence before it starts”—the city of Los Angeles approved a staggering $450,000 from its general fund to flow into this NGO between 2024 and 2027.
  • The Payout: In 2025 alone, this taxpayer-funded NGO handed Alvarez $58,156 to patrol the streets as an unarmed “peacekeeper.”

Federal authorities noted that during the search of “Diablo’s” vehicle, they discovered top-tier, military-grade body armor plates in his trunk — marketed as the highest level of protection available on the civilian market.  Apparently, being a “Peace Ambassador” requires a lot of tactical gear when you are actively running with a cartel-linked street gang.

If convicted, Alvarez would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.

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The 667-pound clue spy agency missed in David Rush’s gold bar scandal: ‘Humiliation for the CIA’

The CIA should have known something was off the moment ex-officer David Rush demanded 667 pounds of gold bullion.

Instead of requesting diamonds or rare gems — the far lighter, more mobile currency the agency has long favored for clandestine work — Rush asked for heavy gold bars, a choice a former senior CIA official told The Post was an obvious red flag.

Now Rush is incarcerated in an Alexandria, Va., lockup and charged carrying out a massive theft – although it is the spy agency itself facing tough questions from lawmakers about how he was ever allowed to get this far.

The first clue is the gold itself.

“You tend to go in other directions because it’s lighter. Precious jewels are better. Diamonds are better,” former CIA Iran targets officer Reuel Marc Gerecht told The Post.

“People don’t realize how heavy money is. It was regularly a problem for large payments – particularly if you’re trying to do it clandestinely. You could just weigh yourself down with cash. Gold – you’d need mules,” he exclaimed.

The security breakdown allegedly allowed Rush, who had a top secret security clearance, to hoard in stages 303 gold bars valued at $40 million and weighing 667 pounds.

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Former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Sentenced to Two Years for Falsely Claiming to be a Citizen and Illegal Firearm Possession, Will be Deported to Guyana After Serving Time

Former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Andre Roberts, a citizen of Guyana who illegally lived and worked in the United States for over two decades, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for falsely claiming to be a citizen on official employment forms and illegally possessing multiple firearms while unauthorized to even be here.

After serving his sentence, with credit for roughly eight months already spent in custody, Roberts will be immediately turned over to ICE and deported back to Guyana.

The illegal alien ran Iowa’s largest school district, serving 30,000 students, from July 2023 until his ICE arrest on September 26 of last year.

Before that, Roberts was superintendent of the Millcreek Township School District in Erie, Pennsylvania, the second largest in Erie County, overseeing thousands more American children.

Roberts entered the U.S. in 1999 on a student visa, which expired in 2004.

NBC News reports:

Roberts became the first Black educator to helm Des Moines Public Schools when he was hired in 2023 to lead the district of about 30,000 students.

After submitting a Social Security card and a driver’s license as verifying documents, Roberts stated he was a U.S. citizen in his application to the state board of educational examiners, which issued him a professional administrator license in 2023, the district said.

Before the sentencing, Roberts’ lawyers confirmed that was not true.

“Dr. Roberts made a fatal mistake when he completed an I-9 to work with Des Moines Public Schools … falsely affirming he was a United States citizen,” his lawyers wrote in a 173-page brief to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

When agents went to arrest him, Roberts attempted to flee.

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