Tag: fraud

Bondi’s DOJ Launches Fraud Investigation of UnitedHealth, Same Insurer Whose CEO Was Assassinated

The Justice Department, now headed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, is reportedly investigating Medicare billing practices from UnitedHealth Group, a move which comes weeks after the assassination of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of subsidiary UnitedHealthcare.

The attorneys are reportedly examining possible civil fraud linked to UnitedHealth Group’s practices for recording diagnoses that allow for extra payments to Medicare Advantage plans, according to a Friday exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal.

That includes potential fraud at physician groups owned by UnitedHealth Group.

Insurers receive payments under the Medicare Advantage system to oversee benefits for enrollees, but the payments increase when certain diagnoses are discovered.

That creates an incentive to diagnose more ailments and receive more payouts.

The Journal previously reported that Medicare paid UnitedHealth Group billions of dollars for “questionable diagnoses.”

Justice Department attorneys have been interviewing some of the same medical providers mentioned in the outlet’s investigations.

The Justice Department is also pursuing an antitrust probe against UnitedHealth Group, and has filed to prevent the insurance behemoth’s $3.3 billion potential acquisition of home healthcare company Amedisys.

The reported civil fraud investigation is separate from those cases.

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Social Security Chief Says Millions Of Dead People On Record ‘Not Necessarily Receiving Benefits’

The new head of the Social Security Administration (SSA) on Wednesday addressed speculations that millions of deceased individuals over the age of 100 may be receiving Social Security benefits, stating that they are likely exaggerated.

Acting SSA Commissioner Lee Dudek, appointed recently by President Donald Trump, issued a statement on Feb. 19, clarifying concerns raised by Trump, DOGE frontman Elon Musk, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The three had said in social media posts and press briefings that SSA records list individuals as being 100, 200, or even 300 years old—raising questions about potential improper payments.

Dudek said he wants to “acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security,” adding that the “reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record.”

“These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” Dudek said, while expressing confidence in the audits conducted by DOGE, which Trump has tasked with uncovering any fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending.

“I am confident that with DOGE’s help and the commitment of our executive team and workforce, that Social Security will continue to deliver for the American people,” Dudek said.

Trump said at a Florida press briefing on Feb. 18 that DOGE’s findings suggest “millions and millions” of centenarians may be receiving benefits improperly. This is “obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” he said.

“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden, we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” the president said.

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Almost Fired For Working With DOGE, Social Security Fraud Expert Now Leads The Agency

Leland Dudek was an obscure bureaucrat at the Social Security Administration who dedicated his career to stopping fraud. But when he worked with the Department of Government Efficiency to do just that, he came close to being fired.

“At 4:30pm EST, my boss called me to tell me I had been placed on administrative leave pending an Investigation,” Dudek wrote on LinkedIn. “They want to fire me for cooperating with DOGE,” he wrote in a now-deleted post obtained by The Daily Wire.

Then, a stunning reversal occurred. It was Acting Social Security Commissioner Michelle King who was out of a job. And Dudek was reinstated with a big promotion — taking her job leading the massive agency on an interim basis.

The Washington Post reported that King exited the agency after refusing to let DOGE access agency data and was replaced by Dudek. But it has not been reported that managers at the agency had moved to punish Dudek as he cooperated with the efficiency czars.

The LinkedIn post said “I confess. I helped DOGE understand SSA. I mailed myself publicly accessible documents and explained them to DOGE. I confess. I moved contractor money around to add data science resources to my anti-fraud team. I confess. I asked where the fat was and is in our contracts so we can make the right tough choices.”

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Elon Musk’s DOGE Team Uncovers Over 25 Million People Ages 100+ in Social Security Database, Some Older Than the Constitution: “There are a Lot of Vampires Collecting Social Security”

Elon Musk’s DOGE team has unearthed jaw-dropping irregularity from the U.S. Social Security database.

The numbers are truly mind-boggling: over 25 million Americans registered aged 100 and older, with some purportedly older than the U.S. Constitution itself.

Late Sunday night, Musk tweeted a staggering claim accompanied by a table of ages, suggesting that the Social Security Administration might be paying out benefits to “vampires.”

“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the ‘death’ field set to FALSE. Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk quipped.

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US Treasury pays $100bn annually to unknown recipients – Musk

Elon Musk, as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has said that the US Treasury pays over $100 billion annually to individuals without Social Security Numbers (SSNs) or temporary ID numbers. Musk has urged immediate reforms to address potential fraud and inefficiencies in payment systems. 

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X has been appointed a “special government employee” to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under US President Donald Trump’s administration and is currently among Trump’s key advisers. Despite its name, the agency is not a permanent federal executive department, but a temporary body dedicated to reducing government spending. The tech billionaire has set a goal of reducing the federal deficit by at least $1 trillion, which would require daily cuts averaging $4 billion.

“Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious,” Musk posted on X.

According to Treasury officials, approximately half of these payments, equating to $50 billion per year, or $1 billion per week, could be fraudulent, Musk stated. He described it as “utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.”

Musk said that in response, DOGE and the Treasury Department have agreed to implement measures to enhance transparency and accountability in government payments. These include requiring all outgoing payments to have a payment categorization code. Musk pointed out that this field is frequently left blank, making audits challenging.

Additionally, all payments must include a rationale in the comment field, which is currently often omitted. 

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Trump’s War on Fraud: MORE Staggering Government Waste Numbers Revealed!

On Thursday, President Trump unveiled startling revelations about government waste and fraud, in a report from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk. During a press conference following the signing of a significant executive order, Trump discussed new reciprocal tariffs and DOGE’s eye-opening discoveries. “Whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them. No more, no less,” Trump asserted, as reported by The Gateway Pundit. He emphasized the need for fairness, declaring, “In almost all cases, they’re charging us vastly more than we charge them, but those days are over.”

Trump is on a mission to slash wasteful government spending that has long been siphoning taxpayer money through fraud and abuse. The findings are quite staggering: up to $521 billion federal dollars are lost to fraud annually, with 2023 witnessing an estimated $236 billion or more in improper payments. Since 2003, an astonishing $2.7 trillion has vanished in improper payments, meaning payments funneled to the wrong recipients. The numbers for 2024 were equally disconcerting, with $162 billion in improper payments, including a $15.9 billion loss in the Earned Income Tax Credit, $10.5 billion in food stamps, $8.7 billion in the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, $6.5 billion in Supplemental Security Income, $5.6 billion in unemployment insurance, and $8.3 billion in Social Security Disability Insurance and Survivors Insurance Program, which included $6.5 billion in overpayments.

The Gateway Pundit has been diligent in exposing these massive waste figures, including the $2.7 trillion squandered since 2003, an issue highlighted by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s DOGE Subcommittee. Trump has made it clear that this is merely scratching the surface. Imagine the potential savings for American taxpayers if Washington stopped obstructing President Trump’s efforts to audit government spending with Elon Musk’s team. “That’s what Elon’s working so hard on with his group of almost 100 geniuses,” Trump remarked to reporters.

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Congress Discovers $2.7 Trillion in Fraudulent Government Payments — Why Is This Not a Bigger Story?

On Wednesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) held her DOGE subcommittee hearing and announced it has discovered that over the past 20 years, the U.S. government has squandered $2.7 trillion on improper payments. Just last year alone, the government handed out $170 billion to individuals who were deceased, criminals, or otherwise ineligible for government programs.

Even more alarming, the government made $44 billion in payments with no clear record of where the money actually went — officials simply don’t know.

Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest culprits when it comes to these improper payments. The Biden administration lost a staggering $764 billion due to a combination of inaccurate record-keeping, bureaucratic incompetence, and outright fraud.

Where’s the outrage? Where’s the media coverage? 

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Elon Musk’s ‘Proof’ of Government Waste Is in the Pudding

Earlier this week, Elon Musk appeared at the Oval Office with President Donald Trump; Musk’s son, X Æ A-Xii, even made an appearance. Citing a desire for “maximum transparency,” the tech billionaire discussed the efforts of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government.

Here was how The New York Times described the press conference: “In Oval Office, Musk Says Without Proof That Bureaucracy Is Rife With Fraud.”

Later, the newspaper tweaked the headline to read: “At Oval Office, Musk Makes Broad Claims of Federal Fraud Without Proof.”

To be maximally charitable to the Times, they did not actually state that claims of federal fraud are baseless, just that Musk failed to proffer examples. Musk did cite examples of government processes clearly in need of updating, including the infamous, inefficient limestone mine where government employee papers are kept—something that sounds completely ridiculous but actually exists.

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Refugee awarded by Tim Walz pleads guilty to role in giant COVID-related fraud scheme

A refugee in Minnesota who once received an award from the Walz administration has pled guilty for participating in the largest known COVID-related scam in America.

On Friday, 43-year-old Ayan Farah Abukar, who lives just outside Minneapolis in Savage, Minnesota, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with the Feeding Our Future case.

Following the COVID pandemic, the Minnesota Department of Education began allocating federal resources from the Federal Child Nutrition Program to the organizations Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care, with the expectation that the organizations would use the money to help Minnesota children in need, the Sahan Journal explained.

Abukar became involved through the organization she founded, Action for East African People. As executive director, Abukar partnered Action for East African People with Feeding Our Future and another group identified only as Sponsor A in the DOJ press release.

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Pfizer Agrees to $60 Million Settlement in Kickback Scandal for Allegedly ‘Bribing’ Doctors to Promote Migraine Drug — Defrauding Medicare and Other Federal Health Programs

Big Pharma Pfizer has agreed to a hefty $59.7 million settlement to resolve allegations of a kickback scandal that has defrauded Medicare and other federal healthcare programs.

The scandal revolves around Biohaven Pharmaceutical, a company acquired by Pfizer in October 2022, which engaged in unethical practices to push prescriptions of its migraine medication, Nurtec ODT, also known as Rimegepant.

Whistleblower Patricia Frattasio, a former sales representative at Biohaven, played a crucial role in bringing these malpractices to light, leading to a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act in 2021.

The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed that from March 2020 through September 2022, Biohaven manipulated the healthcare system by offering kickbacks—including speaker honoraria and lavish meals at upscale restaurants—to healthcare professionals.

Allegations include that Biohaven paid some healthcare providers over $100,000 to boost prescriptions of their migraine medication, Nurtec ODT, resulting in fraudulent claims to federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

This egregious scheme involved not just ordinary incentives, but also repeated, unnecessary educational programs that offered no real benefit to attendees, turning these events into mere facades for bribery.

This practice, aimed at increasing Nurtec ODT prescriptions, breached anti-kickback statutes designed to keep medical decisions free from financial influence.

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