Tag: welfare

Red State Audit Exposes Taxpayer Spending Bombshell

A newly released audit in Mississippi is raising fresh questions about how taxpayer dollars were tracked after state officials uncovered more than $10.5 million in Medicaid spending tied to illegal aliens over a three-year period.

The findings have reignited debate over government transparency, border enforcement, and whether residents were fully informed about the financial burden placed on public programs.

The report, issued by State Auditor Shad White’s office, covers federal fiscal years 2023 through 2025 and follows a prior review that first highlighted the broader taxpayer cost of illegal immigration in the state.

White said the controversy centers not only on the amount of money spent but also on how long those costs went unreported.

His office launched a follow-up review after concerns emerged that Mississippi’s Medicaid system had not properly disclosed expenditures linked to illegal aliens through required reporting channels.

The newly released findings have fueled criticism over whether taxpayers were kept in the dark for years about the true cost to public programs, according to The Daily Signal.

White argued transparency is one of the core responsibilities of state government.

Under federal rules, hospitals must treat emergency patients regardless of citizenship status. States are also expected to track and report how much taxpayer money is used to cover those emergency-related services.

White’s office said Mississippi’s Medicaid program did not begin properly reporting those figures until scrutiny increased after the earlier audit. That disclosure gap became a major focus of the new review.

The deeper investigation ultimately found more than $10.5 million in Medicaid-related expenditures connected to illegal aliens during the three fiscal years examined.

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FBI Raids 22 Minnesota Child Care Centers and Businesses, Including the Infamous ‘Quality Learing Center,’ as Part of Fraud Investigation Linked to the Somali Community

The FBI, along with federal, state, and local law enforcement, executed 22 search warrants across the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area in Minnesota early Tuesday morning.

The targets included multiple childcare centers and other businesses, most reportedly tied to the Somali community, as part of the ongoing investigation into social services fraud that has allegedly cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed the operation in a statement to NBC News.

“Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation,” the spokesperson said.

The raids were not related to immigration enforcement, officials stressed repeatedly.

Instead, they focused on alleged fraud in programs such as childcare assistance, Medicaid-funded services including autism support, and pandemic-era initiatives.

One high-profile location hit was the “Quality Learing Center” in Minneapolis, a day care that gained national attention after a viral video by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley showed no children present despite receiving millions in public funds.

The center was later reported to be closed.

Minnesota has been the center of repeated, large-scale fraud schemes involving federally funded social services.

The Feeding Our Future case alone involved over $250 million in fraudulent claims for meals that were never served.

The Department of Justice charged 47 defendants in that scheme in 2022, with dozens pleading guilty and additional convictions continuing to be secured.

Separate investigations have targeted fake autism services that allegedly defrauded taxpayers of $14 million, with multiple defendants indicted since September and at least one guilty plea.

The Trump administration has estimated total fraud losses in Minnesota social services programs at up to $19 billion.

The raids come just months after President Donald Trump declared a “war on fraud” and appointed Vice President JD Vance to lead a dedicated task force to root out waste in federal programs.

Vance commented on the raids in a post on X.

“The task force and the DOJ will be relentless in exposing these fraudsters wherever they may be hiding,” Vance wrote.

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Louisiana Democrat Mayor Indicted on Medicaid Fraud Charges

A Louisiana Democrat Mayor was indicted on Medicaid fraud charges.

Winnsboro Mayor Alice Wallace was indicted for Medicaid fraud in a $75,00 benefits scheme.

Wallace said she will be “vindicated” in a lengthy social media post.

“The devil is trying to embarrass and discredit leadership to possess power again through those who know nothing,,that way they can run it!!” Wallace wrote in a Facebook post.

The Shreveport Times reported:

Winnsboro Mayor Alice Wallace said that she will be “vindicated” of Medicaid fraud charges in a Facebook post following her arrest April 21 by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill with the town’s mayor’s election three weeks away.

Wallace is charged with six counts of government benefits fraud in what Murrill described as a Medicaid fraud scheme in which the mayor is accused of illegally securing $75,000 in benefits from 2021 through 2026.

Wallace declined to comment when reached by USA Today Network by phone April 22, but an April 21 post on her Facebook page said, “They just energized Team Wallace…”

“It’s election time; what else you got! I’m still standing!!” the post said.

Per the Louisiana Attorney General’s office:

LBI found that Wallace fraudulently received Medicaid benefits for herself and a dependent between 2021 and 2026. Wallace did not report to LDH a change in household income, failed to disclose her marital status, and intentionally misrepresented the availability of health insurance provided through her employers.

Agents found that Wallace failed to notify LDH that she was employed from 2021 through 2022, where she received a salary and was offered health coverage insurance. From 2022 through 2026, Wallace was employed by the Town of Winnsboro, Louisiana, as the elected Mayor, and did not report to LDH that employment, income, or availability of medical health coverage as required.

LBI’s investigation revealed that Wallace and her dependent continuously utilized Medicaid program benefits from 2021 through 2026, while she received a salary that would have made her ineligible to receive benefits from the State of Louisiana and the LDH programs. The LDH Medicaid Fraud Division found that Wallace fraudulently received benefits for a combined loss of claims of approximately $75,000.00.

LBI obtained an arrest warrant for Alice Wallace through the 19th Judicial District Court of Louisiana, in that she intentionally committed:

6 Counts – LA.R.S. 14:70.9 – Government Benefits Fraud

Wallace was arrested for knowingly concealing and failing to disclose material facts affecting her and her dependents’ continued eligibility to receive benefits from the Louisiana Department of Health Medicaid program. Those six counts pertain to the years of 2021 through 2026, in which Wallace was known to be employed, received an income, failed to disclose that income as required, and continued to receive benefits.

“Our Louisiana Bureau of Investigation has arrested Winnsboro Mayor Alice Wallace for 6 counts of Medicaid fraud in a $75,000 benefits scheme,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said.

“It doesn’t matter who you are—if you defraud the hardworking taxpayers of Louisiana, you’re going to jail,” she said.

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Food Stamps Could Buy Hot Chicken Under New Bipartisan Bill

Members of Congress from both parties want to let people on the federal food stamp program buy hot rotisserie chickens with their benefits.

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) and 17 other members of the House of Representatives on April 22 introduced legislation that would amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 and make clear that benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, could be used to buy hot rotisserie chicken.

Four senators filed a similar measure in the Senate.

Food stamps cannot be used to buy everything in a grocery store. Hot, prepared foods are prohibited under the program. Food stamps can be used for cooked rotisserie chicken, but only if it has been allowed to cool.

Lawmakers said allowing families to buy hot chicken, which is typically sold for $5 to $10 at stores such as Costco and Giant, is a way to help families struggling with affordability.

“It is just plain common sense to allow SNAP participants to purchase a rotisserie chicken with their benefits,” Crawford said in a statement. “Hot rotisserie chicken is healthy, widely available, popular in grocery stores, and aligned with the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”

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New HUD rules will stop sheltering illegals in public housing. Here’s who really benefits

This week the Trump administration moved toward a dramatic change in policy governing public and subsidized housing. The public comment period closed on the rule proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reserve housing assistance to American citizens — to “prohibit…making financial assistance available to persons other than United States citizens…in HUD’s public and specified assisted housing programs.”

It could lead to the eviction of an estimated more than 20,000 public and subsidized housing residents who took advantage of a loophole in the law restricting public assistance to citizens. Sparks could fly, à la ICE in Minneapolis, if illegal immigrants and their possessions are thrown into the street.

HUD is not wrong that lax enforcement has opened the apartment door for the undocumented. But cracking down on illegals, given their small number, is far less important than another new HUD initiative that could change the character of “the projects” for citizens who have been trapped there in poverty.

There’s no doubt that a legal loophole has allowed illegal immigrants to enter public housing, notwithstanding long waiting lists. Here’s how it worked: A legal immigrant can advance off a long waiting list to get into public housing and then invite undocumented family members to join him or her in a “mixed household,” so long as they pay rent based on their income — which they must, in theory, report.

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The ‘Minnesota Millionaire’ Exposed A ‘Fully Weaponized’ Welfare Loophole

They call him the “Minnesota Millionaire,” a wealthy retiree who helped expose how a loophole in the food stamp program is being abused and screwing taxpayers out of billions of dollars. 

“I like to say I audited the program. And what better way to audit the program than to be a part of it?” Rob Undersander told The Federalist in a phone interview this week. 

Over the past decade, the retired engineer has been a crusader against the federal Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE) policy, a welfare enhancer with roots in the Clinton administration that has incentivized wholesale theft from U.S. taxpayers ever since. Undersander has worked alongside the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) to end the BBCE loophole and prevent millionaires like himself from tapping into benefits they have no business receiving. 

In a new video exclusively provided to The Federalist, FGA breaks down the scam that more than 40 states have used to balloon the nation’s welfare rolls. The foundation calls it “fraud by design.”  

“In fact, millions of food stamp recipients exceed the federal asset or income limits,” the video explains. Roughly one in five of those Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients count assets of $100,000 or more, the FGA notes. 

Undersander began “auditing” the SNAP program in 2016 — by collecting SNAP benefits. 

‘Fully Weaponized the Loophole’

The retiree was volunteering at the Central Minnesota Council on Aging, helping seniors sign up for Medicare plans, when he learned about Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility. The loophole helps states bypass federal food stamp eligibility requirements, specifically income and asset thresholds. The latter limits take into account liquid assets, such as cash on hand or readily available money in bank accounts. Wealth in property, retirement accounts, life insurance, personal goods and other possessions don’t count toward the asset limits.

States get around the limits through the so-called “non-cash benefit” provision. 

“If someone is deemed eligible to receive other welfare benefits, they automatically qualify for food stamps,” FGA explains in the video. “And states have fully weaponized this loophole.” 

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Political pressure from Somali community hampered Minnesota fraud probes, whistleblower says

A key whistle-blower, and one of the first to draw attention to what he believed was widespread fraud in the Minnesota welfare system, says that state officials hampered probes into the allegations over concerns about pressure from the state’s Somali immigrant community. 

That community has been at the center of recent welfare fraud accusations, including the Feeding Our Future fraud case, in which prosecutors say more than 70 defendants — most of them part of Minneapolis’ Somali community — were charged in connection to a $250 million pandemic-era fraud on a state-funded meals program for children. 

Last year, new charges in the Feeding Our Future case sparked renewed interest in the state’s federally-funded daycare program. Independent journalists flocked to Minneapolis and recorded videos of empty daycare centers that had received millions in state grants. 

“It was obvious that they were committing fraud”: DHS investigator

But, concerns about Minneapolis daycare centers go back at least a decade, according to the whistle-blower, Scott Dexter, who worked as an investigator at the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) from 2013 to 2019. He told Just the News that his team uncovered evidence of fraud in the state’s taxpayer-funded daycare system almost immediately after he started his work. 

“The very first [daycare] that we investigated […] had received about $3.75 million in one year, and so it was obvious that they were committing fraud,” Dexter told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Tuesday.  

“And the number of these childcare centers would be owned by the same owners, or there’d be, you know, intertwined people involved in it. So one daycare center was involved with another daycare center, so it was obvious that it was a coordinated fraud scheme,” said Dexter. 

In his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, Dexter said that he was hired after a 28-year law enforcement career to be part of a new investigative unit in the Office of the Inspector General at the Minnesota DHS tasked with identifying fraud in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). 

Dexter testified that what his team uncovered was “deeply concerning” regarding daycare centers operating out of commercial spaces “with windows covered, no visible play areas, and very few children ever present.” After reviewing records and surveilling locations, they found “documented patterns of overbilling, nonexistent attendance, and in some cases, children being signed in for hours they were never actually at the center.” 

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America Last: War Abroad, Tyranny at Home—and the Theft of a Nation

“We’re fighting wars, we can’t take care of … daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things… We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”—President Donald J. Trump

Every bomb dropped abroad is a bill sent home.

Every war waged in the name of “security” is paid for by Americans who go without—without affordable healthcare, without stable housing, without a government that prioritizes their well-being.

As the U.S. pours trillions into endless wars and military expansion, Americans are left paying the price—not just in dollars, but in lost freedoms and eroded constitutional protections.

This is not national defense.

This is organized theft.

While Americans struggle with rising gas prices, soaring grocery bills, and mounting debt—fueled in part by reckless tariffs and preemptive wars—the federal government is spending money it doesn’t have on military expansion, foreign conflicts, and presidential excess.

This is not America First.

If anything, it is becoming painfully clear that Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to governing puts America last every time.

Trump has not made it a priority to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. He has not made it a priority to invest in innovation or ensure that the nation remains competitive in a rapidly advancing technological world. Nor has he shown much concern for caring for veterans, the elderly, or the young.

Instead, the government is cutting back on programs that make Americans healthier, smarter, and more secure—while the president builds monuments to himself and indulges in a taxpayer-funded lifestyle of staggering excess.

Despite once claiming he would be too busy to play golf, Trump is on track to leave taxpayers with a bill exceeding $300 million in travel and security expenses—much of it tied to frequent trips to his Florida properties. Each visit to Mar-a-Lago costs an estimated $3.4 million.

Meanwhile, taxpayers are shelling out $273,063 per hour to keep Air Force One in the air.

And while millions of Americans struggle to afford basic necessities, Trump is demanding $377 million—an 866 percent increase—to renovate the White House residence.

But these excesses, outrageous as they are, pale in comparison to the true cost of this administration’s priorities: war.

The Trump administration has requested $1.5 trillion for its FY 2027 military budget—separate from an additional $200 billion in emergency funding for the war in Iran.

The sitting president of the United States is spending money that is not his to spend in order to fight endless wars unauthorized by Congress that do nothing to protect the American people or our interests, while insisting that the federal government’s only priority should be the military industrial complex.

In addition to increasing the budget for the military, prisons, nuclear weapons, and a weaponized Justice Department, the Trump administration has also proposed budget cuts of $73 billion to non-military programs—slashing funding for medical research, public schools, and low-income heating assistance, as well as cuts to affordable housing, job training, small-business lending, anti-poverty programs, agriculture, NASA, research in social sciences and economics, humanitarian assistance and global health programs, among others.

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FRAUD FUGITIVE ON THE RUN: $11M Medicaid Scam Suspect Flees U.S. Before Trial After Posting Bond — Critics BLAST Tim Walz’s “Soft-on-Crime” System for Letting Him Keep Passport

In another jaw-dropping example of Minnesota’s collapsing justice system under far-left Governor Tim Walz, a major fraud kingpin in the state’s largest-ever Medicaid scam has skipped the country, just days before his high-profile trial was set to begin.

Abdirashid Said, the top defendant in a sprawling $11 million personal care assistant (PCA) fraud scheme, is now a fugitive after skipping a scheduled pretrial hearing in Hennepin County.

The trial, expected to last weeks and expose a massive web of fraud targeting taxpayer-funded Medicaid programs, has now been abruptly canceled.

According to reporting from KARE 11’s Lou Raguse, Said had been facing serious charges including racketeering, aiding and abetting theft by swindle, and perjury.

Prosecutors alleged he played a central role in a coordinated scheme involving PCA companies that billed Medicaid for services that were never performed, effectively siphoning millions from taxpayers.

Said had already been convicted of fraud in a previous scheme and was ordered by a judge NOT to work for any company receiving Medicaid funds, KARE 11 reported.

Yet he allegedly continued the grift, complete with perjury on the witness stand, where he claimed massive checks were just “loans and gifts” to pay off prior restitution.

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Welfare Loophole That Lets Millionaires Get Food Stamps

Rob Undersander is a millionaire. He also received taxpayer-funded food stamps. His story illustrates an absurd – and intentional – loophole in America’s welfare system that taxpayers need closed immediately.

Rob applied for food stamps in 2016. A Minnesota resident, he clearly exceeded the program’s asset limits. But in the application process, he was deemed eligible to receive a brochure on domestic violence services, which under state policy allowed him to receive food stamps. Three weeks later, his first food-stamp benefits arrived in the mail. The taxpayer cash arrived like clockwork for the next 19 months, ultimately amounting to more than $6,000. (Rob only did this to prove the system was broken, and instead of keeping the money, he donated every penny to charity.)

It’s no accident that despite being a millionaire, Rob received welfare payments that are supposed to be for the truly vulnerable. The federal government and states have conspired to create a system that intentionally bypasses the program’s eligibility standards. Call it fraud by design.

Federal law establishes two ways to qualify for stamps – either by meeting the income and asset limits, or by qualifying for a cash welfare program. But in 1999, the Clinton administration issued guidance that lets states decide what qualifies as a benefit under those programs. States have responded by offering benefits that are nothing of the kind, in a deliberate attempt to bypass the asset and income limits for food stamps. The domestic violence brochure that Rob received is a good example. States routinely print pamphlets or establish hotlines that have nothing to do with food stamps, yet states deem them as benefits that let ineligible people get on the program anyway.

The Clinton administration frankly admitted the guidance violated congressional intent. The Obama administration later encouraged as many states as possible to use this loophole, while giving it a formal name: “Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility.” Today, 43 states and Washington, D.C.. have embraced this fraud. Our organization estimates that at least 5.9 million otherwise ineligible people are enrolled in food stamps through this loophole. They are also a major reason why at least one out of every $10 spent on food stamps is improper.

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