Team Trump’s fraud crackdown is turning up billions in stolen taxpayer money, even as Democrats do their best to ignore, deny and even enable it.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement Tuesday of a massive takedown — 455 perps collared across nearly every US state and territory — roped in a whopping $6.5 billion in scams.
The operation marked “the greatest combined federal and state effort combating health-care fraud in history,” Blanche noted.
Individual brazen crooks in these jaw-dropping cases siphoned millions meant for people truly in need, and spent it on luxury items for themselves: an $865,000 Bulgari necklace, a $594,000 Ferrari and — get this — a $4.6 million Philippines beach resort.
It wasn’t just taxpayers who got hurt:
- A student actually died during basketball practice after a doctor involved in an $89 million fraud scheme OK’d the kid’s cardiac test based on just a cursory look, even though it contained “unconfirmed interpretations noting potential cardiovascular abnormalities,” the Department of Justice charged.
- A nurse practitioner fraudulently billed Medicare for medical services, including the application of “unnecessary and expensive wound allografts” never applied or dangerously applied to infected sites, per DOJ.
One case alone involved a stunning $3.76 billion in bogus charges: Ibrahim Hilmi of Miami allegedly billed for medical equipment and wound dressings that he never provided.
Fortunately, the government paid only $5.7 million of that amount. But within weeks, that cash allegedly got transferred to Hong Kong and Indonesia as Hilmi fled the country.
In another huge case, the feds charged Marizel Yukee of Las Vegas with illegally billing $906 million in claims, netting a cool $297 million (more than a quarter-billion!) and using the funds to buy real estate, including that Philippines beach resort .
Americans, whatever their political party, should be livid at such blatant thievery.
Instead, Democrats oppose anti-fraud rules, such as those in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, claiming they cost folks their health care — as if it’s wrong to do any checks about whether a transaction is a scam if it means one patient who could legally qualify has to wait to finish the paperwork.
Dems also slam the Trump fraud crackdown as a political hit job targeting primarily blue states and cities.
Of course, those places are the ones that provide most government-subsidized health care and other social services, so most fraud will happen there — especially since Dems are against policing social-service programs. (Plus, this operation exposed “targets” spanning the entire country.)
Worst of all, some Democrats appear to be abetting fraud outright: Vice President JD Vance, for example, wants DOJ to probe, and possibly prosecute, Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and others based on evidence Minnesota’s top state officials ordered local authorities to “stop looking into” fraud for fear of being labeled “racist or Islamophobic.”
Worse, that state’s Department of Human Services actually probed the very people warning about the abuses.
Democrats never stop pushing to spend more on aid for the needy, particularly when it comes to health care.
Yet fraud leaves less cash available for the folks they claim to champion; if Dems truly cared about these people, they’d be the ones screaming loudest about the scams.