Tag: welfare

Husbands With Two or More Wives Get Increased Benefits

The Department for Work and Pensions has increased the benefits paid out to households in polygamous marriages from April. The Express has the story.

The DWP has confirmed in its benefits uprating list that “additional spouses” in “polygamous marriages” are being given a 4.8% boost to their benefits from April, which would most likely be for husbands with multiple wives.

Those who are classed as an “additional spouse” in a polygamous marriage and are above state pension age were in 2025–26 able to claim an additional £119.50 per week of Pension Credit or Housing Benefit, with no given limit on the number of separate additional spouses who can claim in one household, other than the overall benefits cap per household per year.

From April 2026, this has been increased to £125.25 per week per additional spouse, a 4.8% increase in line with wage growth, which is how Pension Credit is automatically increased each spring, which is another £5.75 per week, or £299 extra per year.

The money is less than that person would be able to claim if they lived alone (£238 from April 2026), but is still extra money for a three-person household’s income compared to a two-person marriage.

The rule is not new, but the amount given to second wives is still being increased each year.

Although bigamy is illegal in the UK, the act of marrying more than one person at a time – polygamy – is not illegal if the marriages took place overseas.

This is legal where a person has married multiple wives (or husbands) overseas while legally living in a country where this is legally allowed, and then moved to the UK legally afterwards.

In that circumstance, a person now legally living in the UK, who legally married more than one spouse while living overseas, can then see their second, third and even fourth wife (or husband) all claim an additional £125.25 each per week, as long as that additional spouse came to the UK legally in their own right.

The DWP’s benefits and pension rates 2026 to 2027 document states: “If the claimant is a member of a polygamous marriage and all of the members of the marriage have attained pensionable age on or after April 1st 2021, for the claimant and the other party to the marriage [the allowance per week is now] £363.25.

“For each additional spouse who is a member of the same household as the claimant [the allowance per week is now] £125.25.”

It is understood the DWP believe the number of claimants to be small although it has not been able to provide a number for how many second or third wives do claim the benefit.

Keep reading

Former NFL Player Sentenced to Prison for $197M Medicare Fraud

The Department of Justice announced that former NFL player Joel Rufus French, 47, was sentenced to 16+ years in prison and ordered to pay $110,753,619 in restitution after a years-long scheme to bilk Medicare and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA) out of nearly $200 million.

He also forfeited approximately $17 million that the government seized from bank accounts and other assets.

French was an All-American tight end at Ole Miss before briefly playing in the NFL for the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers.

According to the DOJ, French, who owned a marketing company and was the beneficial owner of eight durable medical equipment (DME) companies, was selling patient information and sham doctors’ orders for orthotic braces that patients did not want or need.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. shared, “Fueled by lies, bribes, and overseas telemarketers, this corrupt scheme preyed on senior citizens and disabled veterans to flood the country with unnecessary medical devices — and then billed the taxpayer for it.”

“Today’s sentence makes clear that if you target America’s elderly, sick, or vulnerable — and rob America’s purse doing so — you will be targeted and brought to justice.”

“The defendant orchestrated a brazen, yearslong scheme that preyed on elderly patients and the families of disabled and deceased veterans to steal millions from Medicare and CHAMPVA.”

Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Scott J. Lampert of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS‑OIG) added, “By hiding behind overseas call centers, sham telemedicine companies, and straw‑owned DME suppliers, he exploited some of the most vulnerable people these programs were created to protect.”

“This lengthy sentence underscores the seriousness of his crimes and sends a clear message: HHS‑OIG and our law enforcement partners remain steadfast in safeguarding taxpayer‑funded programs and ensuring those who seek to defraud them will be found, stopped, and held accountable.”

Keep reading

Massive Health Care Fraud Ignored as Billions Drained From Ohio Taxpayers

Mehek Cooke, senior national security and legal analyst at The Daily Signal, warned that the growing fraud scandal in Ohio is not an isolated case but part of a systemic failure across welfare programs nationwide.

Appearing on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” Thursday, Cooke said she discovered widespread health care fraud last December that is allegedly draining billions in taxpayer dollars. She brought this evidence to government officials, but many failed to take it seriously.

“This was the tip of the spear,” Cooke said of Ohio, pointing to similar fraud cases in other states. “Any time you have a welfare program, there’s going to be fraud because government is so complacent.”

Cooke described her firsthand efforts to investigate suspicious activity in Ohio’s home health care system, including making door-to-door inquiries in areas receiving significant taxpayer funding in Franklin County. Several whistleblowers alerted Cooke in December to alleged home health care fraud in Ohio, claiming that patients were entering doctors’ offices, claiming they needed home health care services. Upon evaluation, providers determined that they did not qualify for those services, but some of these individuals then threatened that if the paperwork was not rubber-stamped, they would return to providers who would approve it.

After receiving this information, Cooke said she brought the alleged fraud to the Ohio attorney general’s office and the Department of Medicaid.

Cooke also visited close to 100 home health care offices. What she found raised serious concerns about whether services were being legitimately provided.

“So, when you knock on doors, most of these people are in the Somalian community. They don’t speak English, so I’m wondering how they’re even providing services,” Cooke said. “It’s hidden behind closed doors.”

Keep reading

Meet The Convicted Fraudster Running A Million Dollar Medicaid Business

After the federal government approved a waiver allowing Ohio to expand Medicaid by paying housekeepers to spend time at elderly people’s houses to help with tasks like “homemaking” and “chore services,” taxpayers across the country footed a shocking $2.5 billion worth of bills between 2018 and 2024, according to a trove of Medicaid data released for the first time by the Trump administration.

The demand for free home care was so high in Ohio that taxpayers spent more on that “personal services” category, Medicaid’s term for non-medical in-home help, than any other outpatient service. The program allows for people who aren’t medical professionals to get paid by the government for work done inside private residences, where what was performed, and even whether anything was done, is essentially unverifiable.

The state’s largest outpatient Medicaid category therefore relies on trust. So who’s facilitating payments from the government?

The Daily Wire spent weeks analyzing the Medicaid data released by the Trump administration as part of its effort to weed out wasteful government spending. I went to Ohio, and found clusters of home healthcare providers that bill the government millions of dollars in desolate buildings filled with empty offices.

At 1415 East Dublin Granville Road, one of the Columbus buildings we visited in our investigation, we found True Home Healthcare LLC.

All that appeared on its door was a tattered piece of printer paper that read, “SORRY WE MISSED YOU, OUT FOR A QUICK BREAK.”

Keep reading

BOMBSHELL: Detroit 2020 Election Document Investigation Reveals WHOPPING 12.4% of Absentee Ballots Are MISSING OFFICIAL ENVELOPE Required By Law From 51 Taxpayer-Subsidized Housing Addresses

New Jersey resident Yehuda Miller, Check My Vote founder Phani Mantravadi, and Patty McMurray of The Gateway Pundit have joined forces with over 100 incredibly dedicated volunteers in one of the largest citizen-led election integrity investigations in American history.

Our incredible team of volunteers and election experts is currently reviewing nearly one million documents from Detroit and Wayne County’s November 2020 election — the same records a judge finally forced the City of Detroit to turn over after they repeatedly denied Yehuda Miller’s FOIA requests.

This is long, grueling, and often tedious work. Many of the documents arrived in completely out-of-order. Our team — led by Phani Mantravadi’s (founder of Check My Vote) technical expertise — built a custom website to organize and display them. Thanks to Phani Mantravadi, we now have successfully digitized and sequenced over 155,000 absentee ballot envelopes by counting board, allowing our volunteers to meticulously examine every single one for irregularities and fraud.

Please consider giving to this VOLUNTEER effort, with over 100 individuals dedicating up to 12 hours a day to help us complete this project before the midterm election. We have a GiveSendGo account set up to help fund this project, and we humbly ask you to consider making a contribution to support our work, as we receive no outside or government funds.

Volunteers are entering critical data — flagging every questionable, fraudulent, or illegally accepted ballot envelope that Detroit officials rubber-stamped in 2020.

Before we release our findings to the public, we check, double-check, and, in some cases, even triple-check our work to ensure accuracy.

Keep reading

Millions of Americans expected to lose SNAP benefits amid fraud crackdown

Some Americans who are reliant on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, are expected to lose benefits after the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Starting Friday, May 1st, the president’s bill requires adults up to 64 years old, without young children, to log 80 work, school, or volunteer hours per month to maintain eligibility.

Supporters of the new restrictions believe it will reduce the risk of SNAP fraud and increase workforce participation.

“Reintroducing basic guardrails like an asset test is a commonsense step to restore integrity, ensure benefits go to those who truly need them and protect the long-term viability of the program. This isn’t about taking help away. It’s about making sure SNAP works the way it was intended to,” said Matt Schmid, America First Policy Institute Health & Harvest Campaign Director.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently working to crack down on food stamp fraud across the nation, including what officials call a “loophole,” which allows wealthy individuals to claim eligibility for government benefits.

“We’ve found 500,000 people getting more than one benefit illegally. We found 244,000 dead people. This is just the red states,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

The USDA also revealed this week that in one state alone, SNAP recipients had ties to more than 14,000 luxury vehicles.

Keep reading

DOJ Targets Blue State for Giving Illegals Financial Assistance While Neglecting U.S. Citizens

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to scrap New Jersey rules allowing illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges, even though Americans living outside of New Jersey are charged higher tuition.

“Imagine being denied the opportunity of education in your own country,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said, according to a Department of Justice news release.

“By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, the state of New Jersey is doing just that,” he said.

Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division added that “this is a simple matter of federal law: in New Jersey and nationwide, colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens.”

Keep reading

Legal Scholar John Yoo Says State and Elected Officials in Minnesota Could Absolutely End Up in Prison Over Fraud: ‘These People Are in a Lot of Trouble’

John Yoo is a law professor at UC-Berkeley who worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush. Today, he appeared on FOX News with
Kayleigh McEnany.

She asked him if there was any possibility that elected officials and state officials in Minnesota could go to prison over the massive fraud that has been uncovered there.

He said that they absolutely can, and maybe not in the way you might think.

Yoo says:

“These people are in a lot of trouble. These are not just overpayments. This is not just, as we were talking about the other day, criminal fraud.

Now that you’re seeing the money end up in the hands of foreign terrorist organizations, the Justice Department’s counter-terrorism and national security division should now get involved and see whether any of these state officers knew or were abetting these money transfers, because if they did they are giving material support to terrorists and they could go to jail for a very long time.”

Kayleigh then asks if any of these people would be covered by any sort of immunity, to which Yoo replies “Of course not.”

As an example, he points to the Wisconsin judge who was recently found guilty of trying to hide an illegal alien from federal officers. He then goes on to say that the situation in Minnesota is actually worse than that.

Keep reading

Report: Foundation for Govt. Accountability finds 14K luxury vehicles linked to SNAP recipients

In a recent disclosure, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins revealed that more than 14,000 luxury vehicles have been linked to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients within a single state.

Citing a 2023 analysis from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Rollins noted that the data identified high-end brands — including Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Porsche, Tesla, BMW, Lexus, and Cadillac — associated with thousands of Americans registered for taxpayer-funded food assistance.

Many of these vehicles were late-model releases with staggering price tags, such as Lamborghinis valued at over $680,000 and Ferraris exceeding $600,000.

The report specifically highlighted several egregious cases of individuals maintaining lavish lifestyles while receiving government benefits. Among the notable examples were a university professor owning a $346,000 Rolls-Royce, a self-described “celebrity barber” operating a 2018 Lamborghini Huracán valued at $220,000, and a professional football player driving a 2022 BMW M760i worth $158,000.

These findings have since sparked renewed debate regarding program integrity and the effectiveness of current asset tests used to determine eligibility for federal nutrition assistance.

“And this is just in one state,” Rollins emphasized in an X post. “We need to defend our nutrition programs for those most in need, not for scammers gaming the system.”

The vehicles reported were three Bentleys, three Ferraris, 11 Lamborghinis, 59 Maseratis, 141 Porsches, 244 Alfa Romeos, 306 Land Rovers, 2,098 Teslas, 3,636 Lexuses, 1,914 BMWs and 1,131 Cadillacs.

In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!

Keep reading

Medicaid Withholds Additional $91 Million In Funding For Minnesota

In his latest action targeting Minnesota fraud, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said his agency would delay paying $91 million in Medicaid claims to the state.

“This is about protecting patients and respecting taxpayers,” Oz said in a video posted April 30 on X, announcing the decision.

The money being withheld includes “$76 million tied to 14 service categories highly vulnerable to fraud,” Oz wrote on X. The remaining deferred payments—$14 million—could potentially have been directed “towards illegal immigrants who weren’t supposed to be getting this coverage,” he stated in the video.

The most recent amounts are on top of an initial $259 million the agency halted in February amid the North Star State’s ongoing fraud scandals.

Minnesota sued Oz’s agency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over that decision, but earlier this month a federal court refused to unfreeze the funds as the litigation continues.

Oz said he notified Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials before going public with his most recent decision. The Epoch Times sought comment from Walz but received no reply prior to publication.

Minnesota’s fraud scandals drew widespread attention in late 2025. Since then, President Donald Trump has ratcheted up fraud investigations across the nation. Trump appointed Vice President JD Vance to head an anti-fraud task force and the Justice Department formed a National Fraud Enforcement Division.

Oz’s new Minnesota funding freeze comes two days after agents raided 22 Minnesota sites in connection with fraud investigations.

The state’s issues with the defrauding of its public programs follow “a pattern we can’t ignore,” Oz said.

“Minnesota’s Medicaid program has shown serious vulnerabilities to fraud,” Oz wrote. “These are not isolated breakdowns—they point to systemic issues that must be addressed.”

The federal government funds roughly half of Medicaid, he wrote, which gives his agency “the authority and the responsibility to ensure those dollars are spent legally and appropriately.”

Medicaid will refuse to pay “bad bills,” he said, adding that Minnesota is therefore being asked to provide more documentation to justify payment of the requested funds. “When something doesn’t look right, we investigate; it’s our job.”

Oz said his agency is providing “as much support as we can” to help Walz “turn this around.”

Earlier this year, following months of nationwide attention on Minnesota’s fraud-plagued programs, Walz asked state lawmakers to enact what he called “a comprehensive anti-fraud package.”

In an April 17 newsletter, Minnesota Rep. Kristin Robbins, who chairs the state’s anti-fraud legislative committee, said she remains concerned that officials with two key state agencies have continued to testify that “they don’t think anyone who fails to do their job will be fired.”

“Instead, they talked about how they will provide additional training and support,” Robbins said.

Robbins is running as a Republican gubernatorial candidate to replace Walz, who withdrew his reelection bid amid the scandals. She wrote that she supports a few of Walz’s fraud-prevention ideas, including upgrading computer systems that are used to verify eligibility for government benefits. She also agrees with Walz that the time limits for prosecuting fraud crimes should be extended beyond the current six years. Walz proposed a one-year extension, Robbins said, but she proposed a bill calling for an additional four years so that prosecutors could move forward with charges a decade after the alleged offenses.

“The most important element in preventing fraud is creating a no fraud, no excuses culture,” Robbins wrote.

Keep reading