Tag: fraud

ANOTHER ONE: Los Angeles County Employees Charged for $700,000 Pandemic Fraud Scheme

The country is already reeling from the massive fraud scandal unfolding in Minneapolis. Now it turns out that there is another huge fraud scandal coming to light in Los Angeles, California.

In this case, Los Angeles County employees were busted for $700,000 in fraud charges that stem from an unemployment scheme.

Isn’t it amazing how many people seem to have a talent for gaming system out of massive piles of cash?

KTLA News reports:

11 Los Angeles County employees charged in over $700,000 pandemic unemployment fraud scheme

Eleven more Los Angeles County employees have been charged with felony grand theft for allegedly stealing unemployment benefits while working full-time during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

The new charges, announced by the office, follow an earlier round of filings in October against 13 county employees accused of similar conduct. In total, prosecutors say 24 employees fraudulently collected a combined $741,518 in unemployment benefits between 2020 and 2023.

District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said his office intends to pursue the cases aggressively. “My office will continue relentlessly rooting out fraud and prosecuting government employees who steal from the public they serve,” Hochman said in a statement provided by the District Attorney’s Office. While most county employees “ethically fulfill their duties,” he said, those who “exploit the system and betray the public’s trust” will face prosecution.

More from NBC News in Los Angeles:

Among the newly charged people, several of them worked for the Department of Health Services at the time of the alleged theft.

One employee, Georgette McKinney, a supervising child support specialist for the Child Support Services, stole over $55,000 with her own identity – in addition to stealing over $76,000, using 28 fictitious identities, the district attorney’s office said.

In another case, Jessica Alcorta was charged for stealing over $36,000 in unemployment benefits while working as a legal office support assistant for the district attorney’s office.

“While the vast majority of Los Angeles County employees ethically fulfill their duties and are dedicated to public service, there are some who exploit the system and betray the public’s trust,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement. “My message to fraudsters is unequivocal: If you steal from taxpayers, you will be prosecuted.”

If the Trump administration starts actively looking for fraud in blue cities, they’re probably going to find themselves very busy.

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480 Minnesota Health Services Employees Warned Candidate Kamala Harris of Walz, Fraud in 2024

Kamala Harris and the DNC were repeatedly warned about the widespread fraud in Minnesota under the leadership of Democrat Governor Tim Walz during her 2024 presidential campaign, a group of nearly five hundred Minnesota Department of Human Services employees reported Monday.

“[W]e did write to Kamala Harris and the DNC – multiple times – warning them about Tim Walz & his incompetence, fraud scandals and retaliation,” a post on the Minnesota Staff Fraud Reporting Commentary (formerly, Minnesota Department of Human Service Employees) X.com account explained Monday:

“We tried our best to keep the public informed as our tweets are public. Maybe Kamala Harris turned a blind eye to fraud like her running mate?”

The employees shared a reply to then-candidate Harris back from September 11, 2024 warning her about the fraud taking place in their state and the harm being wrought by her running mate, Gov. Walz:

“Ms. Harris, please listen to Minnesota State Employees who work everyday (sic) to deliver best services possible to our state & people who expect no less & pay our wages. Tim Walz has caused incredible harm to our state & agencies, retaliated against whistleblowers against fraud.”

The post includes a chart of “Selected Minnesota Fraud/Waste Cases 2019-2024” listing 21 state-funded programs receiving a total of more than a half-billion dollars of taxpayer money.

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The Minnesota Fraud Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse for Walz and Omar

Earlier this month, over 400 Minnesota Department of Human Services employees accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of being “100% responsible” for the massive fraud in Minnesota. I wrote at the time that the Minnesota Somali fraud scandal could take down Walz, and every day it looks even more likely. And what do you know, the scandal just got significantly worse for Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar. Newly surfaced photographs show both Democrats smiling alongside Abdul Dahir Ibrahim, a Somali national and convicted fraudster who spent decades in America as an illegal immigrant before Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently arrested him.

Ibrahim’s rap sheet stretches back to Canada, where he was convicted of asylum and welfare fraud before slipping into the United States through New York in 1995, following his deportation from Canada. Despite his history, Ibrahim managed to remain in the country for roughly 30 years, accumulating at least a dozen traffic and parking violations along the way. In 2002, he was arrested for driving without a valid license and for providing false information to law enforcement, earning him a fine and one year of probation. An immigration judge ordered his removal on April 3, 2004, citing significant fraud associated with him. Yet Ibrahim wasn’t arrested until 2025, a staggering 21 years after that deportation order was issued.

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Small Business Administration Uncovers $1M Somali Community Fraud in Minnesota

The Small Business Administration has discovered that the fraud among the Somali community in Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota is still growing with its finding of one million dollars in PPP loan fraud.

Trump-appointed Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler took to her X account to report finding the massive fraud of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that was launched to save businesses struggling to survive the oppressive government policies meant to address the COVID crisis in 2020.

“Numerous individuals and nonprofits indicted in the $1 billion Minnesota COVID fraud scandal, including Feeding Our Future, received SBA PPP loans in addition to other state and federal funding,” Loeffler wrote. “I have ordered an investigation into the network of Somali organizations and executives implicated in these schemes.”

“Despite Governor Walz’s best efforts to obstruct, SBA continues to work to expose abuse and hold perpetrators accountable, full stop,” she said.

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“Widespread Misconduct”: Trump Admin Orders All Beneficiaries Of Nation’s Largest DEI Program To Surrender Financial Records

The Daily Wire has learned that the Small Business Administration has ordered all 4,300 firms in its 8(a) “socially disadvantaged” program, which receive no-bid federal contracts, to turn over their financial records, including general ledgers, bank statements, payroll files, subcontracting agreements, and other internal documents, by January 5 or face removal from the program.

SBA’s crackdown on one of Washington’s oldest DEI initiatives follows mounting evidence that some 8(a) firms have become a major pipeline for fraud, pass-through schemes, and artificially inflated contract costs.

Late last month, Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the investigative journalist who broke the Clinton Cash corruption story, published a report exposing the cronyism and corruption inside the 8(a) program, where pass-through firms handed bidless contracts on silver platters while quietly outsourcing the real work to major consulting companies.

“For years, DC insiders have exploited a federal DEI contracting program that provides windfalls to Beltway elites. This open secret isn’t about helping the downtrodden; it’s about bagging no-bid paydays. The SBA’s 8(a) program is long overdue for reform,” Schweizer wrote on X.

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What did Ilhan Omar know about the $1B welfare fraud case in her Minnesota district?

US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.

Omar (D-Minn.) held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions. 

Omar even introduced the bill that led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it. 

“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program,” claimed Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, to The Post. 

“She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put 2 and 2 together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care,” Glahn added.

Around $250 million was handed out by the Minnesota government to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic from 2020 onward.

Instead, it was pocketed by corrupt business owners, including Salim Ahmed Said. He’s the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.

Said was found guilty in August of stealing over $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.

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Top ex-EU diplomat Federica Mogherini accused of corruption and fraud

The EU’s former chief diplomat Federica Mogherini and two other people have been formally accused of fraud and corruption, the European prosecutor’s office has said.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) did not refer to Mogherini by name, but said the rector of the College of Europe in Bruges – her role – had been formally notified of the accusations. A senior staff member of the college and a senior official from the European Commission were also indicted, the EPPO said, after all three were questioned by Belgian police.

The investigation, which led to police raids on the headquarters of the EU foreign service in Brussels and the elite College of Europe postgraduate school, as well as Mogherini’s home, has deeply shocked EU insiders. Prosecutors suspect fraud in the tender for a contract to run a training academy for young diplomats, which was awarded to the College of Europe by the EU foreign service.

The EPPO, the EU agency in charge of prosecuting fraud involving European funds, said the accusations concerned “procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest and violation of professional secrecy”. It added: “All persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty by the competent Belgian courts of law.”

All three have been released “as they are not considered a flight risk”, the EPPO said.

On Wednesday, Mogherini issued a statement via the College of Europe. “In its long tradition, the College has always applied and will continue to apply the highest standards of integrity and fairness,” she said. “I have full confidence in the justice system and I trust that the correctness of the College’s actions will be ascertained.”

The College of Europe has said it would cooperate fully with the authorities “in the interest of transparency and respect for the investigative process”.

In a letter to staff seen by the Guardian, the EU’s current foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the allegations were “deeply shocking but should in no way tarnish the good work that the vast majority of you are doing every day”.

Kallas, who is one year into a five year mandate, said integrity and accountability “will only improve under my watch” and that the current process showed “safeguards are in place and working”.

One of the accused is understood to be Stefano Sannino, a senior commission official, who was secretary general of the European External Action Service from 2021 to 2024. A request for comment sent to him was referred to the commission, which declined beyond saying it was co-operating with an investigation into activities that took place before the term of the current EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.

Mogherini was the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs from 2014 to 2019, after a brief stint as Italy’s foreign minister. She went on to become rector of the College of Europe, a training ground for European officials and politicians. Her appointment in 2020 proved controversial, with some alumni arguing she lacked academic credentials and experience of running a major academic institution.

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James Comer Says Massive Fraud Uncovered in Minnesota is Just the ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ – Will Look at Other States

Congressman James Comer of Kentucky is the chair of the House Oversight Committee. During a recent appearance on FOX News, Comer described the massive fraud uncovered in Minnesota as just the ‘tip of the iceberg.’

Comer indicated that other blue states will be investigated for similar problems.

This is likely the reason why so many blue states have been so reluctant to turn over their SNAP data to Trump Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins. They know that any examination of this data is likely to uncover huge amounts of fraud and abuse.

If things were this bad in Minnesota, just imagine what’s going on in places like California and New York.

Partial transcript via NewsBusters:

The massive fraud being exposed in Minnesota is just “the tip of the iceberg,” when it comes to social program scams in states run by Democrat governors, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said Wednesday.

Democrat governors like Minnesota’s Tim Walz insist on pouring tax money into social programs where fraud is pervasive – even when they’re alerted to the fraud by whistleblowers, Comer said in an interview with Fox News:

“The fraud entailed a whole menu of government programs – social programs. And that’s the kind of the mojo for the Democrat Party now: they want to sink more and more money into social programs, but yet they refuse to accept responsibility for any type of waste, fraud and abuse.”…

“This is the tip of the iceberg and I think this investigation could lead to many more investigations in other states and, hopefully finally, some savings of taxpayer dollars.”

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Federal Watchdog Reveals Rampant Obamacare Fraud; 90% Of Bad-Doc Applicants Approved In Undercover Test

A new bombshell report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) details a long-running vulnerability in the Affordable Care Act exchanges, showing that weak verification controls continue to expose federal subsidies to significant fraud and abuse. 

“Preliminary results from GAO’s ongoing covert testing suggest fraud risks in the advance premium tax credit (APTC) persist,” the report reads. “The federal Marketplace approved coverage for nearly all of GAO’s fictitious applicants in plan years 2024 and 2025, generally consistent with similar GAO testing in plan years 2014 through 2016.”

According to the report, GAO conducted undercover tests by creating fictitious applicants with fake identities and fraudulent or never-issued Social Security numbers to see how the federal Marketplace would respond. Over the past two years, 90% of those fake applicants were approved for subsidized coverage despite lacking required documentation. In plan year 2024, all four of GAO’s fabricated applicants were approved and received about $2,350 per month in subsidies paid to insurers, even though they failed to provide proof of Social Security numbers, citizenship, or income. GAO scaled up the test for 2025 to 20 fake applicants; 18 were still enrolled as of September 2025, generating more than $10,000 per month in subsidies

More broadly, GAO’s preliminary analyses identified vulnerabilities related to potential SSN misuse and likely unauthorized enrollment changes in federal Marketplace data for plan years 2023 and 2024. Such issues can contribute to APTC that is not reconciled through enrollees’ tax filings to determine the amount of premium tax credit for which enrollees were ultimately eligible. GAO’s preliminary analysis of data from tax year 2023 could not identify evidence of reconciliation for over $21 billion in APTC for enrollees who provided SSNs to the federal Marketplace for plan year 2023. Unreconciled APTC may not necessarily represent overpayments, as enrollees who did not reconcile may have been eligible for the subsidy. However, it may include overpayments for enrollees who were not eligible for APTC.

A big problem with reconciling these Obamacare subsidies is when someone uses a Social Security number that doesn’t actually belong to the person getting the insurance. GAO’s early look at federal Marketplace data found more than 29,000 Social Security numbers in 2023 that showed over a full year of subsidized coverage. One number was used so many times that it totaled more than 26,000 days of insurance across more than 125 plans – the equivalent of more than 71 years of coverage tied to a single number.

The pattern continued in 2024, with nearly 66,000 Social Security numbers being linked to more than a year of subsidized coverage. This can result from identity theft, fake identities, or simple typing errors. According to the GAO, determining the true owner of a Social Security number can be complicated, so it’s examining these cases and other examples of overlapping coverage more closely.

CMS officials say the federal Marketplace lets people sign up even when a Social Security number is already in use. They claim this helps the real owner of the number get coverage in cases of identity theft or simple typing mistakes. The system uses a model that analyzes various pieces of personal information to distinguish applicants, and CMS runs this check monthly to clear out duplicate accounts. They also say applications with repeated Social Security numbers are supposed to go through a data-matching process in which people send in documents to verify their identities. However, even with those explanations, the setup makes it far too easy for fake applicants to slip through, and clearly, they do. The way the system works gives fraudsters plenty of room to abuse Social Security numbers long before anyone notices.

GAO notes that its “covert testing is illustrative and cannot be generalized to the enrollee population.”

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Two-Tier Justice on Full Display: Virginia Grand Jury Refuses to Re-Indict Letitia James

On December 4, 2025, a federal grand jury in Virginia declined to indict Letitia James a second time in her mortgage-fraud case.

This marks the second time prosecutors have failed to move charges against her forward in recent weeks.

James celebrated on Twitter/X with staggering hypocrisy, declaring “As I’ve said from the start, these charges are baseless. It’s time for the weaponization of our justice system to stop.”

The case dates back to an October 9, 2025 indictment, which charged James with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution.

Prosecutors alleged that when she purchased a home in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2020, she misrepresented the property’s status, claiming it would be a “second home” rather than a rental, thereby qualifying for more favorable mortgage terms she was not entitled to.

However, on November 24, 2025, a Clinton-appointed federal judge, Cameron McGowan Currie, dismissed the indictment.

She claimed that the interim U.S. attorney who brought the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was found to have been unlawfully appointed and thus lacked authority to prosecute.

Undeterred, the Justice Department re-presented the case to a new grand jury just 10 days later. But the second grand jury declined to indict.

Sources familiar with the proceedings told reporters that while this constitutes a setback for prosecutors, the door is not shut, that another grand jury or a different prosecutorial strategy remains possible.

This sequence underscores the difficulty in prosecuting Democrat officials for wrongdoing.

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