Tag: fraud

Mexican National Couple Sentenced in Counterfeit ID, Passport Scheme

A Mexican national couple sentenced for making and selling thousands of counterfeit identifications to clients throughout the United States, announced U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson.

U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill sentenced Karina Garcia-Salazar, 47, for conspiracy to transfer identification documents and conspiracy to possess with intent to use or transfer five or more Documents. 

Garcia-Salazar’s co-defendant, Jorge Augusto Prieto-Gamboa, 41, was sentenced in December 2025 for conspiracy to possess five or more documents with the intent to transfer. Judge Hill ordered Prieto-Gamboa to serve 15 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release.

From August 2020 through their arrest in February 2025, Garcia-Salazar and Prieto-Gamboa worked together to create thousands of fake immigration documents. Court records show that the defendants sold the fake documents in several controlled buys orchestrated by agents. During those buys, agents confirmed that Garcia-Salazar and Prieto-Gamboa were working together to sell identification cards and Social Security cards.

A search warrant was served on their home in Tulsa. 

During that search, agents found at least 67 fake completed documents and seized several electronic devices for further search. After searching their devices, agents found more than 2,000 different identification documents, including Social Security cards, lawful permanent resident cards, state driver’s licenses and ID cards, foreign ID cards, and passports. 

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$50 Billion and 30K Dead People: HUD’s Turner Exposes Waste, Fraud and Abuse

HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced new policy changes aimed at restricting federal housing benefits to U.S. citizens, tightening oversight of taxpayer-funded programs, and addressing what he described as large-scale waste and payment errors within the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Turner said HUD has moved to block non-permanent residents from accessing FHA-insured mortgages, while also launching audits of public housing authorities to ensure federal housing dollars are not being used to support illegal aliens.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced new policy changes aimed at restricting federal housing benefits to U.S. citizens, tightening oversight of taxpayer-funded programs, and addressing what he described as large-scale waste and payment errors within the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Turner said HUD has moved to block non-permanent residents from accessing FHA-insured mortgages, while also launching audits of public housing authorities to ensure federal housing dollars are not being used to support illegal aliens.

“We eliminated non permanent residents eligibility for FHA insured mortgages, and we are auditing public housing authorities to ensure taxpayer dollars don’t support illegal aliens,” Turner said.

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Three Maryland Cousins Charged in $3.5M Tax Fraud and COVID-19 Unemployment Scheme

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland unsealed a superseding indictment today, charging three cousins in connection with a tax-fraud scheme.

Daiwor “Mark Brown” Woah-Tee, 52, of Belcamp, Maryland; Dekwii Woah-Tee, 47, of Baltimore, Maryland; and Laiworpaye Woah-Tee, 49, of Nottingham, Maryland, are charged with conspiracy to submit false, fictitious, and fraudulent claims.  

The superseding indictment also charged Daiwor Woah-Tee and Dekwii Woah-Tee with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft stemming from a scheme to fraudulently obtain unemployment insurance benefits during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Beginning in January 2018 and continuing until December 2024, Daiwor Woah-Tee, Dekwii Woah-Tee, and Laiworpaye Woah-Tee knowingly and willfully conspired to defraud the United States and the Department of the Treasury by filing fraudulent Form 1040s seeking tax refunds from the IRS through fictitious claims based on fraudulent material representations.  

The co-conspirators identified and recruited individuals willing to become customers of their tax return business and obtained tax documentation and personal identifiable information from those individuals seeking tax return preparation assistance.

Daiwor Woah-Tee used the information obtained from individuals to prepare tax filings with the IRS. Then the co-conspirators filed, or caused to be filed, false tax returns that contained fabricated information regarding the taxpayer’s dependents, income, education expenses, and eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The co-conspirators caused the IRS to deposit funds into bank accounts that they controlled and then caused the IRS to deliver treasury checks to addresses they controlled.  As a result, the co-conspirators obtained tax refunds they were not entitled to in connection with submitting tax returns in which they illegally sought at least $3.5 million in refunds.

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Jailed Fraud Queen Drops Bombshell: Walz, Ellison Knew About the $250M Heist All Along

A Minnesota woman convicted in one of the largest welfare fraud schemes in state history is alleging that Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud long before federal prosecutors intervened, adding new scrutiny to state leadership already facing a Department of Justice investigation.

Aimee Bock, the former head of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, made the allegations during a jailhouse interview with Fox News from Sherburne County Jail in Minnesota.

Bock has been convicted of welfare fraud tied to the misuse of federal funds intended for child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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JD Vance: California Fraud Dwarfs Theft of Federal Funds in Minnesota

Vice President JD Vance revealed this week that about $7 billion worth of Small Business Administration (SBA) fraud has been discovered in California, an indicator the theft of federal funds across all departments in the Golden State could well exceed any other state’s.

“I think we have a fraud problem that is much worse in California than it is in Minnesota,” Vance said in an interview Thursday with Newsmax.

He continued, “I was talking actually to our small business administrator and I think she found probably a half billion dollars of fraud in Minneapolis and the broader Minnesota area. I think she’s found 7 billion dollars worth of fraud in California.”

“This is unfortunately a problem that is much bigger than Minnesota,” he added. ”But it also highlights how absurd this effort to prevent immigration enforcement is.”

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Legislation Proposed To Make It Easier To Denaturalize Somali Fraudsters

In the wake of the massive Somali-fraud scandal out of Minnesota and other states, President Donald Trump wants to denaturalize American immigrants convicted of crimes and deport them, but the current legal framework and federal bureaucracy make such sweeping denaturalization efforts difficult to achieve quickly. 

“I would do it in a heartbeat if they were dishonest,” Trump told the New York Times earlier this month. “I think that many of the people that came in from Somalia, they hate our country.”

Existing federal law provides limited pathways for revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act the government can denaturalize individuals who obtained citizenship through fraud, misrepresentation, or the concealment of material facts during the naturalization process. The law does not allow automatic revocation based solely on crimes committed after naturalization. Current denaturalization proceedings require civil lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice in federal court or criminal prosecutions for naturalization fraud, both demanding individualized evidence, extensive litigation, and meeting high burdens of proof. Civil cases require “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence,” while criminal prosecutions demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has proposed a solution to this problem. He’s introduced the Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act in the Senate to expand federal denaturalization authority. The legislation creates a 10-year window after naturalization during which citizens who commit specified crimes could face citizenship revocation and deportation. Among those offenses are welfare fraud exceeding $10,000, aggravated felonies, espionage, and joining terrorist organizations, a category the bill explicitly extends to gangs and drug cartels. The measure also lowers the threshold for federal authorities to begin denaturalization proceedings by broadening the legal grounds beyond fraud committed during the citizenship application process.

The bill even includes a fallback provision that automatically reduces the revocation window from ten years to five years if courts strike down the longer period as unconstitutional.

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Virginia Democrat Moves to Squash Oversight of Nonprofits After Somali Fraud Scandal

A Virginia state Democrat introduced a bill that would bar the state from verifying eligibility to receive federal taxpayer benefits.

“No state agency responsible for the administration of federal funds shall impose a requirement on a nonprofit charitable organization providing a federal public benefit to determine, verify, or otherwise require proof of eligibility of any applicant for such benefits,” the one-page bill stated, which was proposed by state Delegate Jessica Anderson.

The Dominion State Democrat’s bill was introduced as the nation has increasingly scrutinized the misuse of taxpayer funds. The Trump administration has moved to clamp down on fraud across many federal benefit programs.

Billions of dollars of taxpayer funds have been lost due to fraud related to Minnesota’s Somali community.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged at least 78 people as part of the “Feeding our Future” scandal, named for a Somali-linked nonprofit that bilked taxpayers of $250 million.

Those accused reportedly faked invoices, attendance records, and the distribution of meals in low-income and other areas in Minnesota.

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MORE FRAUD? Reporter in Maine Finds Building With Ten Somali-Owned Home Healthcare Companies – Landlord Says No One is Ever There 

A reporter for NewsNation traveled to the state of Maine and uncovered more possible fraud.

He highlighted one particular building that is supposedly home to ten Somali-owned home healthcare companies, yet when he interviewed the landlord, he said that there is never anyone there.

He then interviews a local newspaper reporter who points out various locations that are also supposedly home healthcare companies, which just so happen to be next door to businesses that can wire money to Somalia.

This is all so shady.

From NewsNation:

Maine building houses 10 health care firms; landlord rarely sees anyone

Office buildings across Maine are packed with home health care companies that rarely have anyone present, raise red flags similar to fraud patterns discovered in Minnesota and, in some cases, have overbilled the state by hundreds of thousands of dollars before vanishing, a NewsNation investigation has found.

One Portland office building houses 10 home health care businesses — about half the building’s tenants — with the landlord saying he rarely sees anyone from most of the companies except when they pay rent.

“One guy I see coming and going, and the rest of them, I never see them, only when they pay their rent, if I’m here when they pay their rent,” said Ron Nevins, who owns the building. “They’re never here. Nobody’s over here, and then all of a sudden, if it was one or two or three or four, I’d be like, ‘OK.’ But when there’s 10, I’ve had as many as 12 or 13 probably before. You just wonder, what’s up with this health care thing? Why are so many people doing it all from foreign lands?”…

The clustering of multiple health care providers in single locations mirrors patterns identified by the House Oversight Committee as major fraud indicators in Minnesota, where billions in taxpayer funds have allegedly been stolen through shell companies billing for services never provided.

One tenant in Nevins’ building, Five Star Home Health Care, overbilled MaineCare by nearly $400,000 according to state audit documents obtained by The Maine Wire. The owner then abandoned the office.

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Aimee Bock, “mastermind” of Minnesota’s biggest fraud scheme, says “I wish I could go back and do things differently”

The Trump administration has justified its ongoing immigration crackdown in Minnesota by citing a need to curb fraud and pointing to a widening scandal involving members of the Somali American community. Yet prosecutors say the mastermind of the state’s biggest fraud scheme to date was not Somali but a White woman — 45-year-old Aimee Bock. 

In an exclusive interview from her jail cell, Bock defended her conduct, admitted regrets and argued that state officials who she worked with should bear some of the blame. It was the first time Bock spoke publicly since she was arrested for her role in what prosecutors say was a $250 million COVID-era effort to defraud a federal program to feed hungry children. 

“I wish I could go back and do things differently, stop things, catch things,” said Bock, who was the head of Feeding Our Future, the now-infamous nonprofit that signed up restaurants and caterers to receive taxpayer money for providing meals to kids. “I believed we were doing everything in our power to protect the program.”

So far, prosecutors have charged 78 defendants connected to Feeding Our Future, with more than 60 pleading guilty or convicted at trial. Nearly all are East African or of Somali descent, except for Aimee Bock.

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Ohio Physician Gets 5 Years in Prison for Role in $14.5M Medicare Fraud

An Ohio doctor has been sentenced to prison for his role in a healthcare billing conspiracy scheme that was intended to fraudulently bill Medicare for more than $14.5 million.

Timothy Sutton, 44, of North Ridgeville, Ohio, was sentenced 5 years and 4 months in prison by U.S. District Judge David A. Ruiz, after he pleaded guilty in April 2025 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, false statements related to health care matters, and aggravated identity theft. He was also ordered to serve 3 years of supervised release and pay nearly $6 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Judge Ruiz imposed the sentence on Jan. 12.

According to court documents, Sutton used his position as a licensed medical doctor in the state of Ohio to cause submission of claims on behalf of patients who did not need the medical treatment. He was employed by two telemedicine companies based in Florida which provided him with pre-completed orders for durable medical equipment (DME), such as braces, and/or cancer genetic testing (CGX) for him to approve and digitally sign. 

“Mr. Sutton deliberately lied about performing patient examinations and then used his role as a trusted medical professional to line his pockets at the expense of taxpayers. We will not tolerate those who utilize their positions of authority to defraud Medicare, or any government agency,” said United States Attorney David M. Toepfer for the Northern District of Ohio. “Thanks to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Cleveland FBI’s thorough investigations, we have put a stop to this rampant fraud and abuse of power.”

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