Tag: fraud

Derek Chauvin’s Attorney Makes ‘Bombshell’ Motion to Dismiss, Alleging ‘Fraudulent’ Conduct by Tim Walz and Keith Ellison

Attorneys for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin filed a petition Tuesday seeking a dismissal of the state murder charges against him, arguing that it was unlawful for Gov. Tim Walz to assign Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to prosecute the case

In April 2021, Chauvin, 50, was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020. Video showed that Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck for over 9 minutes.

An autopsy revealed that there was both fentanyl and methamphetamine in the man’s system, which may have been contributing factors to his death. Floyd would not comply with police orders to stay in the squad car, prompting Chauvin to eventually get on top of him and put a knee on his neck to subdue him.

Chauvin is currently serving a state sentence of 22 years, in addition to a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights, The Hill reported.

The former police officer’s latest petition seeking to get his conviction overturned was filed with the Minnesota Court of Appeals. That court has denied two previous petitions by Chauvin.

Chauvin’s attorneys argued in their Tuesday filing that Walz’s assignment of the case to Ellison was “illegitimate” and therefore violated their client’s due process rights.

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I’m Sorry, The Feds Wasted HOW MANY TRILLIONS in Improper Payments?

Instead of drawing out the big mystery over how much of your money Washington wastes on improper payments, I’ll just tell you right up front: In the 20 years between 2003 and 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates the total money blown on payments made in error, or in the wrong amount, or with no documentation (!!!) is $2.7 TRILLION.

That’s a two followed by a seven followed by 11 zeroes. That’s almost double what we spent last year on Medicare/Medicaid combined, or on Social Security. It’s triple last year’s defense budget. It’s almost triple the unconscionable amount we spent last year just servicing Washington’s outstanding debt.

It is almost exactly the same amount Washington collected last year in personal income taxes. And if that doesn’t make your blood boil, you must be reading this inside a walk-in freezer, chewing on a mouthful of Lopressor.

The incomprehensible numbers come from a Cicero Institute report earlier this year titled “Rebuilding Public Trust by Ensuring Accountability in Government Spending.”

Dream on, right?

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ActBlue Co-Founder Pleads the Fifth During Closed-Door Meeting

The co-founder of the Democrat fundraising powerhouse ActBlue invoked his Fifth Amendment right during a deposition with three key House Committees, according to sources reported by FOX News.

Matt DeBergalis was in and out in under thirty minutes this morning during a deposition with the committees on House Administration, Oversight, and the Judiciary.  The deposition was reportedly over lax fraud prevention standards which may have allowed foreign donations to seep through their filters and into U.S. campaigns.

According to InfluenceWatch.org, DeBergalis is an MIT graduate who created ActBlue in 2004 after a failed bid for city council.

Influence Watch cited a 2007 interview where DeBergalis described ActBlue:

The whole thing is built around using existing social networks: whether they are coworkers asking each other to do things, friends, or existing communities built around e-mail lists or blogs. But we aren’t trying to direct people to give money to any particular place, we’re just trying to facilitate connections that already exist. Our feeling is that everyone has some sphere of influence and that set of people will respond to appeals from a person far more actively and frequently than they will to a top down national advertising campaign. We’re just trying to harness that.

Originally, ActBlue would list every Democrat running for office in a state where ActBlue was active. A user would select which Democrats they wanted to support. The fundraiser would use their social circles and encourage people to donate to that candidate. ActBlue would process the credit card and send the money directly to the candidate or organization. 3

DeBergalis saw ActBlue as a counter to the traditional Republican advantage in direct-mail fundraising, saying, “The other big tool however has been direct mail — it works particularly well for the Republicans, they’ve always had a large advantage in direct fundraising by mail. ActBlue is a nice counter-example: our model, where everyone can use their own language and own pitch for why they’re supporting a candidate, actually works better for the democratic party than for a republican party.” 3

Last month, The Gateway Pundit reported that ActBlue and the DNC allegedly funneled millions through payroll firm Rippling taken from unwitting employees.  The total accounted for approximately $23.3 million in payroll expenditures processed by the DNC.

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200,000 Fake AI ‘Victims’ Deployed To Scam-Bait Online Fraudsters

Australian tech firm Apate deploys a vast array of AI-bot characters worldwide that play the role of gullible scam victims to waste millions of hours of con artists’ time each month.

Hilariously, one of the company’s monthly performance metrics is how many times frustrated scammers swear at the idiot ‘victims’ who are playing dumb and stringing them along.

“I think we’re the only company in the world that is actually keeping as part of their KPIs the number of F-words that scammers are dropping at them,” Apate founder Dali Kaafar tells Magazine with a chuckle. 

The company has a stable of almost 200,000 AI characters that are able to hold convincing phone conversations and to chat on social media and messaging platforms.

”I can tell you that we’re basically servicing, as we call them, hundreds of thousands of calls a day, and pretty much hundreds of thousands of conversations on the other channels,” he says. 

Every hour of a con artist’s time they waste is another hour they’re not scamming a member of the public. In the six weeks up to the end of 2025, Apate’s bots engaged in 600,000 scam calls for a single telco called TPG in Australia. 

“Essentially, we wasted more than five hundred days of scammers’ time,” he explains. “That roughly equates to somewhere around thirteen million dollars being saved.”

The bots’ other goal is to elicit actionable intelligence for banks and telcos to combat scam rings across Australia, Asia, Africa and the UK and Europe.

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Lawless State: California Democrats Pass ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ – Journalists will Be Fined THOU$ANDS For Recording and Exposing Fraud Inside Immigration Support Service Providers

California Democrats on Wednesday passed AB 2624, dubbed the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ by Republicans. The bill, introduced by Democrat Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, restricts the release of investigative videos exposing immigration support service providers.

Mia Bonta is married to California’s radical far-left Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The California Democrats got to work on AB 2624 earlier this year after investigative journalist Nick Shirley exposed rampant hospice and daycare fraud.

The bill will fine journalists (and regular citizens) a minimum of $4,000 for exposing potential fraud inside certain immigration support service providers.

The bill passed the California Senate on Tuesday and was sent back to the Assembly for final passage on Wednesday.

Governor Newsom is expected to sign the bill.

California Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio blasted the Democrats for passing Mia Bonta’s bill.

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Minnesota “Outstanding Refugee” Award Recipient Gets Busted for Defrauding Medicaid By OVER $1 MILLION with Help of Individuals Connected to Sex-Trafficking Ring

In news that should surprise absolutely no one, a refugee once celebrated by the State of Minnesota turned out to be less than upstanding.

KMSP reported on Monday that Salman Ahmed Elmi, who was honored as an “outstanding refugee” by the Minnesota Department of Human Services, has been busted for defrauding Medicaid by over $1 million.

By that’s not all. Police say that Elmi’s alleged co-conspirators at Reva Health in Golden Valley have connections to a recent sex trafficking case.

Here’s the background on the case from KMSP:

Elmi is accused of billing Medicaid for more than $1 million in services that were not provided or not eligible. Reva Health provided autism services and adult rehabilitative mental health services.

Elmi and the other co-conspirators are accused of falsifying documents to get Medicaid reimbursements. Prosecutors say other co-conspirators directed staff to pay kickbacks to people to use their information for claims.

The charges state two people involved in the fraud enterprise, former Anoka County prosecutor Andrea Sampson and Frank Devone Reeves, were also involved in a sex trafficking ring that was busted in Hennepin County last week.

Individuals charged in the case face a slew of charges, and on Monday, authorities said there could be many more victims who suffered as a result of that case.

KMSP notes that in addition to being named an “outstanding refugee,” the State of Minnesota also honored Elmi with an Entrepreneurship Award in 2021.

Elmi is the founder and part-owner of the Minneapolis-based startup Tavolo, which received funding from Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary. Tavolo is an AI marketing app for restaurants.

Elmi then used the honor of being a part-owner of the Minneapolis-based startup Tavolo to secure the loan to start Reva Health.

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Democrat Massachusetts Mayor Arrested on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges – Used $1.6 Million in Covid Loans as Personal Slush Fund to Pay Off Mortgages

A Democrat Massachusetts mayor was arrested and charged on Friday with fraudulently obtaining over $1.5 million in Covid business loans.

The Mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Brian Depena, used the proceeds from Covid small-business loans to fund his campaign, pay his personal taxes and pay off nearly $900,000 in high-interest, hard-money mortgages on his properties, according to the Department of Justice.

According to the charging documents during the pandemic back in 2020 and 2021, Depena applied for a taxpayer-funded Covid-era Economic Injury Disaster Loans (“EIDL”) for his tire business.

The EIDL loans must be used as working capital to provide relief to businesses that suffered economic losses during Covid.

However, Depena used the Covid loans to fund his struggling campaign, pay off two high-interest mortgages, and pay back taxes.

Per the DOJ:

Depena allegedly caused Tenares Tire to apply for and obtain an EIDL in the amount of $150,000 in June 2020 and then used the majority of those funds as working capital for the business. However, according to the charging documents, Depena needed cash by early 2021. It is alleged that his mayoral campaign was struggling to pay bills, he owed the IRS for back taxes and he owed almost $900,000 to two private, hard money lenders who were charging Depena 12% and 8% interest – significantly more than the EIDL rate of 3.75% – on loans that encumbered various properties Depena owned in Lawrence.

In April 2021, Depena allegedly caused a request for an increase of the Tenares Tire EIDL. On July 14, 2021, the SBA approved an increase of the loan by $350,000, bringing the total Tenares Tire EIDL to $500,000. However, the SBA did not release the funds for another month. While waiting, Depena allegedly sent the following texts (originally in Spanish, here translated to English) to his accountant and financial advisor, who had been assisting Depena with the EIDL application and modification.

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ICE refuses to disclose records on Ilhan Omar fraud probe, cites ongoing ‘enforcement proceedings’

The federal government is refusing to turn over records related to an investigation conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement into allegations of immigration fraud by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., citing a legal exemption for ongoing investigations. 

Just the News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the records in January, seeking the records pertaining to any investigations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the allegations that Rep. Omar, who represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, married a relative in order to help him remain in the country. 

Omar has denied the allegations. No court records, DNA evidence, or other documentary proof has ever substantiated that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, Omar’s legal husband from 2009–2017, was her biological brother.

“ICE has determined that the information you requested is being withheld in full pursuant to Title 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A). Disclosure of any responsive records at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” ICE told Just the News in response to the FOIA in May. 

The FOIA exemption cited by the agency “applies to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes when their release could disrupt such proceedings,” the reply reads. 

You can read the letter below: 

Final Response 2026-ICFO-11295 3 (1).pdf

The Department of Justice guidelines for invoking exemption 7(A) say that doing so requires a two-step assessment. “First, there must be a ‘reasonable likelihood’ of a pending or contemplated law enforcement proceeding,” the guidance says. “Second, release of the information must be reasonably expected to cause some articulable harm to that proceeding.” 

Harm includes things such as exposing the case to witness tampering or tipping off suspects, according to the guidance. The exemption makes no distinction between criminal, civil, and administrative cases. 

Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

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Five Current and Former Texas City Officials – Including the Mayor – Arrested For Fraud

Five current and former Refugio, Texas, city officials were arrested on Wednesday for fraud after they allegedly mishandled hundreds of thousands of dollars that spanned 19 transactions.

Refugio Mayor Wanda Dukes was charged with misapplication of fiduciary property, a first-degree felony, for misusing funds from the Refugio Economic Development Corporation between October 2023 and October 2025.

City Secretary Callie Shreckengost was also charged with misapplication of fiduciary property.

Current City Council Ixtlazihuatl Vasquez, former City Council Frank Hosey, and former City Council Michael Rocha were all hit with third-degree felony charges of abuse of official capacity.

According to the indictment, the state claimed that more than $1 million was misapplied to payments, audit services, garbage collection, and festivals.

KRIS TV reported:

Five current and former Refugio town officials face felony charges after a Refugio County grand jury returned indictments this week following a Texas Rangers investigation.

Mayor Wanda Huff Dukes and Town Secretary Callie Gray Shreckengost turned themselves in at the Refugio County Jail on Wednesday and were later released. Both are charged with misapplication of fiduciary property, a first-degree felony. Bond for each was set at $25,000.

The indictments accuse both officials of misusing funds from the Refugio Economic Development Corporation between Oct. 3, 2023, and Oct. 29, 2025. According to the charging documents, Dukes exercised control over EDC funds as mayor, while Shreckengost had authority to authorize and sign disbursements as town secretary.

The indictments list 19 transactions totaling more than $1 million that the state says were misapplied, including payments for windstorm insurance, garbage collection, water main maintenance, audit services, a police department holiday event and Fourth of July festivals.

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Former Southern Poverty Law Center executive arrested over alleged secret payments to informants

ormer Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Chief Financial Officer Heidi Beirich was arrested on Wednesday, with authorities alleging that she made secret payments to informants in white supremacist groups.

The Department of Justice brought charges against the SPLC earlier this year over fraudulent payments. Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed the arrest in a press conference.

“I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described,” Blanche told reporters. 

Beirich has also been accused of cohabitating with and dating one of the informants whom she allegedly paid.

In June, the DOJ announced charges against the organization on 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The agency alleged that the SPLC paid people to remain in neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups to become informants.

Beirich’s arrest followed a superseding indictment that added her as an individual defendant, CNN reported.

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