Vance highlights billions in fraud uncovered by White House task force

During a May 26 meeting with state attorneys general, Vice President JD Vance revealed that his task force on fraud had discovered billions of taxpayer dollars had been lost to waste and criminal scams, including over $25 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts and COVID-related grants and loans.

The meeting, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, drew about 15 attorneys general from Republican-led states as well as some staffers from the offices of attorneys general in a few blue states. A coalition of 23 Democratic attorneys general declined their invitations, as Zeale News reported.

Vance framed the partnership as an exercise in pragmatism, arguing that federal resources alone were insufficient to root out fraud at scale throughout the country.

"The resources of the federal government, while vast, can be supplemented and aided by a lot of the people who know the best what's happening in their states," Vance said during the meeting, gesturing to the assembled attorneys general.

He said he was "particularly gratified" that the effort was not entirely partisan, noting that the attorneys general from Connecticut and Oregon were represented alongside their Republican counterparts. 

"This should not be a partisan effort," Vance said. "Everybody should care about fraud. Everybody should care about rooting out fraud. Everybody should care about saving the American taxpayers money."

Vance laid out what the White House Fraud Task Force had done so far in its first two months of operation. In addition to the $22 billion in small business loan referrals, many tied to COVID-19 relief programs, Vance said the task force had placed a six-month hold on new enrollments for hospice and home health care providers after finding that many newer providers were not actually delivering services.

Vance also reported that the task force identified $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts – mostly awarded during the Biden administration – and blocked $60 million in student financial aid being siphoned by fraudsters rather than reaching students.

"Fraud is not a victimless crime," Vance said. "It's not somebody that gets to make some money for violating the law and, otherwise, it's not a big deal. This is people who rely on critical services — students who rely on student loan services, sick people who rely on hospice care, small businesses who rely on the availability of loans so that they can grow their business and hire people."

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who serves as vice chairman of the task force and previously served as Virginia's solicitor general, told the attorneys general that detection alone would not be enough. Rather, he argued, the administration must make fraud painful to attempt.

American society has long operated on an expectation of good faith that bad actors are now exploiting at scale, Ferguson said.

"Our benefits programs and our whole society were designed for a high-trust people," he said. "The American people rightly expect that their fellow citizens will deal with them and with the government honestly and fairly."

That trust, Ferguson said, has made the country vulnerable. "Huge segments of the population have decided to take advantage of this generosity and trust of American citizens through deception and fraud, and billions and billions of dollars each year leave our programs in the hands of pirates — pirates, fraudsters, scammers, and gangs who treat American generosity as little more than a get-rich-quick scheme," he said.

Ferguson said the Department of Justice has responded by establishing a new National Fraud Enforcement Division. 

Vance closed the meeting by describing what he called one of the most egregious fraud cases uncovered by the task force: a Minnesota caretaker who was supposed to be providing Medicaid-reimbursed services to an elderly man so he could live independently.

The man provided nothing, Vance said. No services, no check-ins. The elderly man died.

"One day before he died, after months of being neglected by the caretaker who was getting reimbursed by the American people, one day before he died, he submitted his final reimbursement — for services he never provided, for a man he never cared for," Vance said. "That man lived his final moments on this earth neglected while a fraudster got rich by providing services that he never actually provided."

"That's what we're trying to stop, ladies and gentlemen," Vance said. "The only way to protect those people and the only way to protect the American taxpayer is to ensure that the fraudsters go to prison."