Tag: fraud

Sen. Joni Ernst Finds ‘Huge’ Fraud in the $60 Billion Federal Employees Spent with Gov’t Credit Cards: Charges at Casinos, Bars, Pay-Per-View UFC Fights

On Thursday’s “Alex Marlow Show,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) talked about wasteful spending on government credit cards.

Ernst said, “[T]he federal government, through GSA credit cards, has 4.6 million active credit cards and accounts…we have a little less than half that number in federal employees.”

She added that “a lot” of card usage occurs during federal holidays and on days like New Year’s Eve at “nightclubs, bars” and on “Sunday afternoons, okay, a big UFC fight or something pay-per-view.” And there are also cash withdrawals at casino ATMs.

Ernst further stated that about 500,000 cards have now been canceled.

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Cop who claimed total disability was seen ‘dancing and drinking’ at Stagecoach, ran 5Ks, and went to Disneyland: DA

A former police officer from California claimed she couldn’t perform her duties after sustaining a head injury on the job — and then she was seen dancing at a music festival.

According to a press release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, 39-year-old Nicole Brown was a police officer with the Westminster Police Department when she was injured on the job in March 2022. The release stated that Brown sustained “a minor abrasion to her forehead while attempting to arrest and handcuff an uncooperative suspect.” She was examined at the emergency room after she complained about headaches, but was released without any medical restrictions.

Brown then allegedly called out sick for several days and claimed she’d been diagnosed with severe concussion syndrome, which resulted in her being placed on total temporary disability.

While unable to perform her duties as an officer, Brown was entitled to workers’ compensation benefits after sustaining her alleged injury while on the job — including her full salary, tax-free, paid for by “the city, county, or state agency that employs the officer,” according to the DA. After a one-year period, that amount decreases to 2/3 of her full salary but can pay out for up to 104 weeks.

According to the DA, Brown collected more than $600,000 in benefits.

However, evidence obtained by the DA’s office called Brown’s so-called “total disability” into question. While out on disability, Brown allegedly claimed that she suffered from “headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light and noise, problems processing thoughts and words, and an inability to work on the computer or do any screentime.”

But on April 23, 2023 — a full year after Brown went on disability and while still claiming to be suffering symptoms of a concussion — Brown was seen by “several people” who had knowledge of her medical status “dancing and drinking at the Stagecoach Music Festival, with more than 75,000 people in attendance with loud music and bright lights everywhere and temperatures in excess of 100 degrees.”

After those people reported Brown’s activities at Stagecoach to the Westminster Police Department, an investigation into the officer’s disability claims began.

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22 More People, Entities Charged in Arizona Medicaid Fraud Scheme

An Arizona grand jury has indicted 22 individuals and entities linked to a massive Medicaid fraud scheme involving sober living homes.

The charges include money laundering, theft, conspiracy, fraudulent schemes, patient referral fraud, and forgery, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Tuesday.

These indictments are part of an ongoing investigation into a $2.7 billion fraud that exploited Arizona’s health care system, particularly targeting Native Americans seeking treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

According to the charge document, the 20 individuals indicted are associated with a church and a mental health organization called Happy House Behavioral Health. Prosecutors allege that Happy House was paid over $60 million for services that were either never rendered or only partially completed. Some of the billing, they say, was for clients who were deceased or incarcerated.

Prosecutors also allege that sober living facilities referred clients to Happy House, which in turn received funds from the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), the state’s Medicaid agency. Happy House then allegedly paid the referring sober homes for those client placements, an arrangement at the center of the fraudulent scheme charges.

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Brooke Rollins: SNAP Program Filled with ‘Fraud and Abuse and Corruption’

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is filled with “fraud and abuse and corruption” and needs major reform, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said during a policy event with Breitbart News on Tuesday.

Rollins offered a stunning figure, noting that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) spends $400 million per day across 16 nutrition programs.

“Again, let me repeat that $400 million of our taxpayer money is spent every day across our nutrition programs, just at USDA,” she said. “So when the president ran and spoke to the American people about rightsizing government and realigning and making sure that every taxpayer dollar is spent to its best and highest and most effective use, that I’m not sure there is a program — there are others equally equal to it — but I’m not sure that there is a program that perhaps needs more reform than the SNAP program, which is the food stamp program.”

Rollins reemphasized that USDA is spending $400 million per day, and that requires officials to look “very closely” at the program.

At best, she said, “it’s ripe with fraud and abuse and corruption.” She noted that Secret Service recently conducted stings and arrested individuals engaged in SNAP fraud. She said there was “tens of millions of dollars” that were being stolen, noting that money has been given to illegal aliens wrongly in the system as well.

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UK Contractor Extradited to U.S., Pleads Guilty in Massive USAID Fraud Scheme Tied to Pakistan Energy Program

A UK citizen who ripped off American taxpayers through a U.S.-funded foreign aid program has been sentenced to time served after a brazen kickback scheme drained nearly $100,000 in USAID funds — and he’ll now be handed over to immigration authorities.

Stephen Paul Edmund Sutton, 53, of the United Kingdom, pleaded guilty in Washington, D.C. federal court Monday to conspiring to commit theft concerning a program receiving federal funds, a felony offense.

Sutton was a Logistics Operations Manager for a contractor implementing the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Power Distribution Program (PDP) in Pakistan — a five-year effort that was supposed to help modernize Pakistan’s failing electric utilities.

Instead, Sutton and his co-conspirator, who remains under indictment, lined their pockets by setting up bogus shell companies that funneled inflated contracts for forklifts and crane services — all under the guise of helping Pakistan’s struggling power grid. Sutton personally pocketed at least $21,000 in kickbacks.

More from DOJ:

 According to court documents, PDP was a component of U.S. government assistance to the government of Pakistan to support its energy sector.

Launched in September 2010, the five-year program was designed to facilitate improvements in Pakistan’s government-owned electric power distribution companies through interventions and projects addressing governance issues, technical and non-technical losses, and low revenue collection.

The main goal of the PDP was to improve the commercial performance of the participating distribution companies through technology upgrades and improvements in processes, procedures, and practices, as well as training and capacity building.

Under the PDP contract, Sutton’s employer subcontracted through purchase orders with vendors in Pakistan for certain goods and services.

From May through November 2015, Sutton and his co-conspirator, an employee supervised by Sutton, participated in a kickback scheme by creating two companies, obtaining PDP purchase orders for forklift and crane services for the companies, and distributing the profits to themselves.

As part of the scheme, his co-conspirator arranged for low-grade local vendors to provide the services for at least half the contract rates, and Sutton ensured that the company paid the invoices despite suspicions raised by an accounts payable officer.

U.S. government sentencing documents indicate the agency was defrauded of almost $100,000 and that for his part, Sutton received at least $21,000 in kickbacks.

Sutton’s co-conspirator is also charged by indictment and his case is pending disposition.

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Republicans Sound Alarm: Illegal Aliens Faking Accidents, Injuries to Secure Large Payouts

Illegal aliens are being recruited to join sophisticated criminal networks in the United States that stage accidents and injuries to get payouts through the nation’s personal injury system, House Republicans told Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In a letter led by Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), the group of Republicans warned Bondi that personal injury fraud is a growing industry in the U.S. that requires immediate attention from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“These fraudulent schemes pose serious risks to public safety, increase consumer costs, and raise insurance premiums for the motoring public,” the Republicans wrote. “According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, insurance fraud costs the U.S. $308 billion annually, with $45 billion attributable to property and casualty insurance fraud. More importantly, these activities put innocent motorists at risk of injury or even death.”

In particular, the Republicans noted that a criminal ring operating in Louisiana, staging vehicle accidents with commercial trucks, resulted in 63 individuals — including plaintiff attorneys — getting indicted as part of the federal probe into the scheme.

The Republicans said illegal aliens are also cashing in:

It also appears that illegal immigrants are being recruited as part of these schemes, sometimes as a requirement to repay coyotes who helped them cross the border. Numerous cases highlight the intersection of illegal immigration and alleged abuse of the personal injury system, with some plaintiffs reportedly using litigation loans and workers’ compensation payments to repay debts owed to human smugglers. [Emphasis added]

For example, in February 2023, Angel Peralta Ordonez, an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador, filed a workers’ compensation claim just two months after arriving in the U.S., later admitting in deposition that he used $15,000 in litigation loans and $6,000 from workers’ compensation payments to settle a $21,000 smuggling debt. Additional reports, such as those from the New York Post, allege that MS-13 gang members and Russian criminal networks orchestrate fraudulent injury claims, pressuring migrants into unnecessary surgeries to inflate lawsuit settlements. [Emphasis added]

The Republicans urged Bondi to form a task force in the DOJ dedicated to investigating and prosecuting such personal injury fraud schemes.

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FEMA’s Woke Disaster: $2 Billion Fraud, Reverse Discrimination, and Retaliation Buried for Six Years

For six years, FEMA has quietly buried one of the worst scandals in federal disaster response—a toxic mix of reverse discrimination, fraud, and whistleblower retaliation tied to the Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico. I led the contractor team that uncovered it firsthand.

In 2018, I deployed as the technical lead of a Lean Six Sigma team made up of straight, older, white veterans and executives.

Our mission was to bring order, transparency, and efficiency to a FEMA operation crippled by dysfunction. What we found was not just inefficiency—it was corruption: theft, favoritism, and rot embedded deep in FEMA’s culture.

We documented widespread violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Anti-Deficiency Act.

FEMA leadership stole contractor-developed intellectual property and inflated performance metrics in a $1.5 billion scheme to mislead Congress.

Unqualified personnel were promoted—not for merit, but for checking the right identity boxes. This was not mismanagement. It was deliberate.

FEMA’s culture was dominated by DEI politics—identity trumped merit, and promotions were rigged. One insider told us: “Straight white men are at the bottom here.” That was not just talk. It was policy.

At the heart of it was a tight-knit special interest group dubbed internally by FEMA insiders the “LGBTQ Mafia.”

They wielded outsized influence, shielded by management and FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and FOIA offices, which buried complaints and blocked accountability.

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Red Flags in Letitia James Handling of Her Father’s Estate Demand Another Investigation

Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General, has presented herself as a champion of legal integrity.

Yet documents filed under oath in her late father’s estate proceedings in 1999 appear to present legal problems for James involving property law, mortgage representations, and taxation requirements.

Letitia James’ father, Robert James, died on January 15, 1986. Thirteen years later, in 1999, Letitia filed a petition in Queens Surrogate’s Court seeking to administer his estate.

The only asset was a small townhome at 114-04 Inwood Street in Jamaica, Queens, a property Letitia had purchased with her father as “husband and wife” in 1983.

In sworn estate documents, Letitia claimed that the property was held as “tenants in common,” a legal classification that would require the probate court to transfer her father’s share of the house to Letitia.

“The property would not pass to the heirs of the decedent by operation of law,” James wrote in her affirmation, “because the decedent held the property with the undersigned as tenants in common with no right of survivorship.”

That distinction was crucial: unlike “joint tenancy,” which passes ownership directly to a surviving party such as a spouse, “tenancy in common” requires probate court to transfer the deceased’s share.

However, James’s account is contradicted by the mortgage Letitia and her father obtained as “husband and wife” in May 1983.

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No One Is Above the Law: When Will Tom Homan and ICE Arrest and Deport Ilhan Omar for Marrying Her Brother and Committing Immigration Fraud?

According to her limited bio on the far-left Wikipedia, Ilhan Omar divorced her second husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2011.

Ilhan’s second husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is her brother.

The two were legally married on February 12, 2009, and divorced in 2011.

Democrat Ilhan Omar married her biological brother.

Power Line reported on this scandal years ago:

A reader has written us to point out that the Somali website Somalispot posted information last week suggesting Omar’s involvement in marriage and immigration fraud. The post notes that Omar married Ahmed Hirsi in 2002. Hirsi is the father of Omar’s three children. Omar is depicted with Hirsi and their children on Omar’s campaign website here.

The post further notes that Omar married her brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, implying that the latter marriage assisted his entry into the United States. Her brother was a British citizen. “As soon as Ilhan Omar married him,” the post continues, “He started university at her [a]lma mater North Dakota State University where he graduated in 2012. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Minneapolis where he was living in a public housing complex and was later evicted. He then returned to the United Kingdom where he now lives.”

Ilhan Omar was elected to be a state representative for District 60B on November 8, 2016, and took her oath on the Quran.

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REPORT: USAID Officer Charged With Pandemic Bailout Fraud

When USAID came under the microscope of DOGE, people on the left absolutely flipped out. They all acted like USAID was above reproach and that the world would come to an end if it wasn’t fully funded.

Not only did the world not end, but now we’re learning that a senior officer for the organization has been charged with bailout fraud from the pandemic.

We are probably going to see fraud like this uncovered for years to come.

The Daily Wire reports:

USAID Contracting Officer Charged With Pandemic Bailout Fraud

A USAID employee in charge of managing contracts for the agency created a fake company to fraudulently secure coronavirus benefits for himself, federal prosecutors said Friday.

“Yusuf Akoll worked as a Senior Procurement Contract Specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development,” according to a previously unreported court document. “From at least in or around March 2021, and continuing through at least in or around August 2021, Akoll [made] materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements…that resulted in Akoll receiving two [Paycheck Protection Program] loans totaling approximately $16,666 that he was not entitled to receive.”

Prosecutors said that in November 2020, Akoll registered a company in Virginia called Naagode Consulting LLC, then applied for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan under the coronavirus bailout package, claiming he worked at Naagode and the money was necessary to prevent job losses.

Only companies in operation in February 2020 were eligible, so he falsely said it was established in January 2020. To establish a loss of income, he said the company had $40,000 in income in 2019 when it actually had no income, prosecutors said.

Is anyone really shocked by this?

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