Tag Archives: Fraud

Taking Action Against Fraud

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On Saturday, Alpha News posted an article about changes made to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to stop the fraud within the program.

The article reports:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service has disqualified 1,562 retailers associated with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and disabled 760 illegal point-of-sale devices since Oct. 1, 2025.

This has resulted in the prevention of nearly $835 million in fraudulent SNAP transactions, Stephen Vaden, deputy secretary of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), said in an April 17 post on X.

“Commit fraud? We will find you and hold you accountable. Including jail time. And now, we have the whole of government, under the leadership of @VP and @AFergusonFTC, rooting out abuse of any program meant to help the most vulnerable,” Vaden wrote, referring to Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson.

Responding to the post, Ferguson said, “More is coming!”

Fraud by SNAP retailers can involve selling items not allowed under the program, exchanging SNAP benefits for cash, and lying on their applications to get authorized to participate as a retailer under the program, according to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

Such retailers can face permanent or temporary disqualification from the program, denial of application, withdrawal of authorization, financial penalties, and criminal charges that can lead to fines and even prison time.

The article concludes:

In a Dec. 2 report last year, the Government Accountability Office noted that most SNAP benefit cards lack features to prevent theft, such as microchips, which are standard on debit cards.

“Although the full extent of theft is unknown, states reported replacing more than $320 million in stolen benefits between October 2022 and December 2024. During that period, state SNAP agencies provided funds to replace stolen benefits when recipients reported a theft that could be substantiated,” the report said.

“But some recipients may not have known they could file a claim. And the law limited recipients’ filing to two claims per year. As a result, the estimate of losses may not truly reflect the full extent of theft. And, after December 2024, states can no longer replace stolen SNAP benefits with federal funds.”

It’s a beginning. I can’t imagine how much federal spending we can cut simply by dealing with the fraud.

The Reward For Whistleblowers

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about  Treasury Secretary Scott Besent’s idea for encouraging whistleblowers to report fraud.

The article reports:

Uncle Sam needs you to help crush the billion-dollar financial fraud gangs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is launching a new program on Monday that will reward tipsters with up to 30% of the fines imposed on criminals who are trying to bleed US taxpayers dry, The Post has learned.

The program includes tips for Medicaid and Medicare rip-offs — and given that fraud in those two programs tops some $70 billion per year according to one estimate, whistleblowers could be in for some big payouts.

Other forms of financial crimes are also included.

The payments will come directly from fines, rather than having the American taxpayers foot the bill, according to confidential Treasury documents obtained by The Post.

“Individuals located in the United States or abroad who provide information may be eligible for awards if the information they provide leads to a successful enforcement action that results in monetary penalties exceeding $1,000,000,” one of the documents reads.

It would mirror a similar scheme run by the Internal Revenue Service, which is also overseen by the Treasury Department.

The article notes:

Medicaid and Medicare fraud costs at least an estimated $68.7 billion each year, according to a 2022 study conducted by the Colorado State University Global White Collar Crime Task Force.

Illustration of the "Operation Gold Rush" scheme showing a transnational criminal organization defrauding Medicare in the US and laundering money through Russia and other countries.
The Justice Department has alleged that $10 billion in fraudulent claims were filed while transnational criminal organizations received $941 million from Medicare and Medicaid supplemental insurers. DOJ

The confidential Treasury warning to banks raises as many as 24 “red flags” for financial institutions to watch for, including claims logged by someone without permanent residence in the US, sudden spikes in billing from newly established medical companies, or making huge transfers to companies overseas just after a direct deposit from the government clears.

The article concludes:

Treasury hit New York-based investment bank Canaccord Genuity with a record $80 million civil fine just three weeks ago for failing to monitor suspicious trading.

Investigators said that between 2019 and ⁠2022, Canaccord failed to file at least 160 suspicious activity reports covering thousands of ​questionable transactions, with some activity that deserved “red flags” going unreviewed for months or years.

The allegations were unrelated to healthcare fraud, but focused on a Cyprus-based firm that spent years helping Russian oligarchs move money out of Russia.

The corruption is deep, and it is on both sides of the aisle.

Student Loans For Dead People

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If the government continues to give away millions of dollars to dead people, some of us are going to start declaring ourselves dead!

On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the number of student loans being given to dead people.

The article reports:

The Trump administration is fixing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid program after uncovering around $1 billion in fraud, according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

“We have identified and saved about a billion dollars for FAFSA loans that would’ve been fraudulent,” McMahon told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview.

The Biden administration only required identity verification for less than 1% of students applying for student loans, McMahon claimed.

“There were dead people who were applying for loans and receiving them, bots who were receiving, and we identified in Minnesota several thousands of these bots,” she said.

The Trump administration found about $90 million in federal student aid was fraudulently disbursed.

This includes more than $30 million given to deceased individuals and more than $40 million distributed to companies using bots disguised as fake students. 

McMahon said the agency has “totally revamped” FAFSA.

The article concludes:

While improving the FAFSA portal, the Education Department discovered the widespread fraud.

The agency launched an identity verification effort in June, and it found about 150,000 suspect identities in current FAFSA forms just within the first week.

The department announced in December it is hiring a new fraud detection team.

“We already have the team in place,” McMahon said. “We are working—it’s been amazing what we have discovered.”

“I’m very pleased with the results,” she continued, “so I think they’ve got a good team in place, and I think they’re doing a really good job.”

I am glad that this is being cleaned up, but I am tired of constantly hearing about fraud in government programs and having no one held accountable. Who received the money, and why are they not in jail?

Unfortunate Consequences Of Bad Behavior

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On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about the halting of child care and family assistance funds for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York.

The article reports:

“Families who rely on child care and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a written statement. “This action reflects our commitment to program integrity, fiscal responsibility, and compliance with federal requirements.”

The HHS will freeze access three programs that the HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) oversees, which includes the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG).

HHS will restrict:

    • $2.4 billion for the CCDF
    • $7.35 billion for TANF
    • $869 million for the SSBG

The government that provides for you can also stop providing for you. That is a lesson all Americans need to learn. Hopefully investigations can proceed quickly and legal funds can be restored where they are needed.

The article concludes:

The funds to three blue-run states will continue to be frozen until ACF determines that the states are in compliance with federal requirements.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and Governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” a health department spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News.

The spokesperson stated that the administration is “ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes.”

One senior Trump administration official said that the child care programs were frozen due to “rampant fraud” and that money was given to illegal aliens.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), in response to a post by President Donald Trump claiming that the investigation into fraud in California has begun, called the 47th president a “deranged, habitual liar whose relationship with reality ended years ago.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) called the incoming funding freeze a “frontal assault” on children.

“We will fight this with every fiber of our being because our kids should not be political paws in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue state governors,” she continued.

This is unfortunate, but so are the years of rampant corruption. Bad behavior has consequences, and innocent people get hurt. Hopefully the churches and charities will help cover the gaps.

Another Step Away From The Constitution

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On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article reporting that a Minnesota judge has thrown out a jury’s guilty verdict.

The article reports:

We’ve told you quite a bit about Minnesota’s ongoing fraud problems, the vast majority of them stemming from the large Somali population in and around Minneapolis. The state has paused Medicaid payments over fraud concerns (and that fraud has led to at least one death), and millions of dollars were laundered through the Feeding Our Future program and state housing programs, too. A lot of that money ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab, the largest terrorist group in Somalia.

Despite all the evidence of fraud, a Minnesota judge has just overturned a jury’s guilty verdict in one Medicare fraud case, paving the way for all the other fraud convictions to be overturned as well.

The jury heard that Yusuf and his wife were charged and the jury learned his “home health company” was operated out of a mailbox at an address where multiple other “home health companies” als operated. The state showed they spent tens of thousands of dollars on luxury items.

The jury quickly found the couple guilty. Now, a judge in Hennepin County, Sarah West, has overturned that verdict.

“It’s reversing or overturning a jury’s verdict,” said defense attorney Joe Tamburino. Tamburino was not affiliated with Yusuf’s case but looked at the judge’s decision.

According to Tamburino, Judge West said the state’s cased relied “heavily on circumstantial evidence” and that the state did not “exclude other reasonable, rational inferences.”

“That, in fact, there could’ve been other reasonable theories other than guilt in this case. That’s what it comes down to,” Tamburino said.

Remind me again why we have juries.

There are a number of legal cases working their way through the courts involving Feeding Our Future. The writers at Power Line Blog have followed these cases (some recent examples here and here). The amount of fraud is unbelievable and people need to be held accountable.

The Health Care Heist

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On Wednesday, PJ Media posted an article about the biggest health care heist in American history. The heist was discovered thanks to the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), artificial intelligence (AI), and basic law enforcement techniques.

The article reports:

If you didn’t hear about the bust of 324 people; the U.S.-based cartel shell medical supply companies; the pill mills pushing opioids; the doctors on the take; or how law enforcement captured many of the bad guys at the U.S. border and airports as they rushed to escape, that’s understandable. The feds revealed this potential $14.6 billion “depth charge” planted inside the Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance programs in June, while most people were away on summer vacation.

Why did transnational organizations go after these particular programs? “Criminals go where the money is,” Acting Health and Human Services Inspector General,Juliet Hodgkins said at a news conference about “the largest health care fraud takedown in American history.” There’s more than $1.4 trillion spent by these government programs per year, and the bad guys have tried, by hook or by crook, and even with the aid of AI, to set into motion plans to steal nearly $15 billion. They got away with just shy of $3 billion before they were caught, and their other frauds were frozen in their tracks.

If this bust looks to you like it had Elon Musk’s old Department of Government Efficiency fingerprints on it, you’d be right. Using AI and law enforcement tactics, the DOGE team worked with HHS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, and an all-hands-on-deck array of federal agents from the DEA, FBI, and health care agencies to track down all fraud leads, according to Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As a result, the feds are setting up a healthcare data fusion center to detect where fraud spikes are occurring in near real time.

The article concludes:

Other scams used a network of Phoenix-based sober living houses to demand government payments for people who never got addiction treatment at the facilities. The facilities, run by ProMD, received $560 million before the feds caught on to the scam.

In Atlanta, medical professionals ordered skin grafts for dying patients who didn’t need them. By the time the grift was discovered, they’d scammed Medicare out of $760 million.

People from as far away as Estonia have been arrested. Seven people were found trying to scuttle over the southern U.S. border but were stopped before they got away. Another bunch were caught trying to leave the country from U.S. airports.

The bad actors from Russia, Pakistan, and Eastern Europe used the American health care system like their “personal piggy bank,” the Department of Justice’s Acting Criminal Division leader, Matthew Galeotti, said. He said that “this was a staggering breach of trust” and they “will prosecute these criminals as aggressively as we would any drug dealer because that’s exactly what they are.”

Musk, who stepped away from the White House after a rift with President Donald Trump, is the one who conceived and executed the DOGE project, and he’s a damned American hero. Let’s give that guy a medal for saving American taxpayers yet another tranche of billions.

All of this fraud was paid for by the American taxpayers.

Slowly Fixing The Fraud

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Yesterday, The Federal Housing Finance Agency released the following statement:

Today, the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (U.S. Federal Housing FHFA) and Fannie Mae issued the following statement:

“In President Trump’s housing market, there is no room for fraud, mortgage fraud, or any other deceitful act that can jeopardize the safety and soundness of the housing industry,” said William J. Pulte, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae. “Since my swearing-in, we fired over 100 employees from Fannie Mae who we caught engaging in unethical conduct, including facilitating fraud, against our great company. Anyone who commits fraud against Fannie Mae does so against the American people.”

“I would like to thank Director Pulte for his empowering of Fannie Mae to root out unethical conduct, including anyone facilitating fraud. We hold our employees to the highest standards, and we will continue to do so,” said Priscilla Almodovar, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae.

In 2016, I posted an article about the 2008 financial crisis. The article included the following video:

The problems at Fannie Mae are not new. I strongly suggest you watch this video. It connects a lot of the dots in terms of who’s who in Washington and the deep state.

Isn’t it time we saw some trials and convictions?

Where Did The Money Go?

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Every person who has ever been involved in bookkeeping, personal or otherwise, understands that expenses have codes or memo lines. Even in Quicken, which I use for my own checkbook, there is a place to put the purpose of the money spent. Well, evidently our government is not really into good accounting practices.

On Monday, The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

On Monday, Elon Musk’s DOGE revealed the federal government didn’t trace $4.7 trillion in payments.

$4.7 trillion dollars in payments were left blank, making it nearly impossible to trace, DOGE said.

“The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process),” DOGE explained in a post on X.

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going. Thanks to US Treasury for the great work,” DOGE said.

The article also notes:

Last Wednesday Real America’s Voice White House reporter Brian Glenn asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about the trillions in fraudulent Medicaid and Medicare payments that have been going overseas.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held her DOGE subcommittee hearing earlier in the day and announced the group’s findings. The subcommittee has found $2.7 trillion in improper and fraudulent government payments since forming their subcommittee.

This number came from a report late last year on government waste.

I applaud DOGE for the work they are doing and hope that it will translate into government efficiency and eventually lower taxes and expenses for Americans.

Misconduct In A Trump Trial? Say It Isn’t So!

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Newsweek (of all places) posted an article on Wednesday about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. It seems as if this lady has no qualms about misappropriating funds, lying, and other crimes that she routinely charges others with.

The article reports:

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis paid the chief prosecutor in former President Donald Trump‘s election fraud trial out of her seized property fund for the first three months he was hired, a defense lawyer has claimed in court documents and before a Georgia Senate committee.

Ashleigh Merchant, attorney for co-defendant Michael Roman, a Trump 2020 campaign staffer, said in court documents that Nathan Wade’s first three months of work as a special prosecutor were paid from the district attorney’s seized property fund before he was paid from a general fund.

She reiterated that claim before a Georgia Senate Special Investigations Committee hearing on Wednesday and added an accusation that other special prosecutors were initially paid from the seized property fund.

A Fulton County District Attorney’s Office spokesman vehemently denied to Newsweek on Wednesday that Wade had been paid from the seized property fund.

Willis and Wade testified in February that they were previously in a relationship but insist that relationship began after Willis hired him to oversee the prosecution of Trump and his co-accused, who were indicted for allegedly trying to overthrow the Georgia result of the 2020 presidential election.

The pair denied in their testimony that they had tried to cover up their relationship until Wade was hired to prosecute the Trump case.

Her denials don’t seem to be working very well as more evidence continues to appear.

The article notes:

Newsweek emailed two attorneys in Willis’ office for comment on Tuesday. Newsweek also sent an email to Wade and an attorney for Donald Trump for comment on Tuesday.

Invoices disclosed by Willis’ office show that from November 1, 2021, to December 31st, 2023, Wade earned $653,881 in total for the case.

For his monthly invoices to Willis, Wade’s title is listed as “the Anti-Corruption Special Prosecutor.”

Wade’s monthly invoices increased to over $30,000 a month in 2022 and have mostly stayed at that level since.

Recent invoices obtained by Roman’s defense team through an open records request show that, for July 2023, Willis paid Wade $35,250 at $250 an hour.

That includes a “team meeting, drafting” that accounts for 33 hours of work, which totaled $8,250, and “team argument and prep” for 32 hours which totaled $8,000.

“Travel out of state and interview witness” lasted 18 hours for a total of $4,500.

Wade earned $35,000 in August 2023; $34,250 in September; $37,000 in October. That dropped to $16,000 in November for a July-November average of $31,500.

Remember when the A-Team used to come into a town and clear out all the bad guys? I think they need to visit Fulton County.

 

This Is Where We Are

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Posted by Charlie Kirk on Twitter:

Every facet of the legal offensive against Trump is utterly unprecedented in American history.

Nothing like today’s ruling in New York, imposing a $354 million fine and banning Trump from all business in New York, has ever happened before. New York’s law allowing for the total dissolution of companies is meant for businesses that are, in fact, fraudulent — those that impersonate other businesses, or rely wholly on fraud to do business. It’s never been used to decapitate a functioning business over a supposed “fraud” that had zero victims.

Nothing like the E. Jean Carroll case has ever happened in American history either. Carroll claims Trump raped her, yet can’t give a year and has a story that matches a TV episode. Trump has never been charged, and all he said is that the allegation was untrue — so he’s been hit with a judgment of more than $83 million. This utterly rewrites the entire concept of defamation law all to attack one person — and I mean that literally, because New York rewrote its state laws specifically to let Carroll bring her ridiculous case, and then had the law sunset six months later.

Nothing like the Alvin Bragg criminal case against Trump has ever happened. Bragg is charging Trump with a felony for falsifying business records. But New York law only allows that to be a felony if it’s done to cover up a separate felony. Yet no other felony has ever been charged — instead, Bragg claims Trump violated FEDERAL election laws simply by making payments to Stormy Daniels. The insane claim is that ANYTHING Trump does to protect his reputation is an election expense that must be reported to the FEC. No court has ever ruled this, and no federal prosecutor has even tried to prosecute Trump for this, yet Bragg, a LOCAL prosecutor, claims the authority to interpret the law this way. Unprecedented.

Nothing like the Fani Willis indictment of Trump has ever happened in this country’s history, either. Fani accused Trump of furthering a “conspiracy” by urging lawmakers to vote a certain way on proposed legislation, and by encouraging the public to watch televised hearings on OANN. Even if Fani Willis’s personal life weren’t a mess of scandal, her case would be a travesty.

And of course, nothing like Jack Smith’s indictment of Donald Trump has ever happened either. No politician in modern US history has ever been charged with a crime for giving a speech where he explicitly told supporters to be peaceful. No American politician has ever been held criminally responsible for every action by any person who supports him. Jack Smith’s case throws out a century of First Amendment law…and it has to, because everything about it completely undermines the First Amendment.

One day, future observers will be shocked and astonished at how America’s leaders ripped up every rule, every norm, and every right that had guaranteed America’s well-being, all for the sake of destroying one man out of hatred.

While Everyone Was Talking About Jeffrey Epstein…

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While everyone was focused on Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump released a summary report of the election fraud that took place in 2020. This is a summary of the evidence that would have been revealed in court had any court agreed to hear the evidence. Unfortunately, our American courts declined to hear any evidence of election fraud in 2020. The evidence was never refuted–it was simply never heard. Why is this important? It is important because it is going to happen again in 2024 unless someone is held accountable.

This is the link to the report:

https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/e0/e04e630c-63ff-4bdb-9652-e0be3598b5d4/summary20of20election20fraud20in20the20swing20states.pdf

The states mentioned in the report are Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. Certain districts in these states were carefully chosen to use mules, ballot harvesting, and simple fraud to steal the election. The report is very interesting reading.

The Insurrection Did Not Happen On January 6th

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On Thursday, American Greatness posted an article putting into perspective the events of January 6th. Now that the videos are being released and new information is coming out, it is obvious that not only was January 6th not an insurrection (an insurrection by people who were not armed?), but served another purpose.

The article reports”

All sides will acknowledge the fact that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to have extra security on January 6. However, there is a bigger question that no one, Left, Right or Center, seems to be asking:

Why?

Why wouldn’t Pelosi want to be sure that “Democracy was secure” so that Vice President Mike Pence could certify the Electoral College vote? Making sure that the Capitol was safe and sound would mean that Joe Biden’s presidency would be assured. After all, the election of 2020 was “the most secure in American history,” so why wouldn’t you want that obvious fact certified and rubber-stamped by Congress?

The only obvious answer to why Pelosi wanted to guarantee a riotous breach of the Capitol was what she knew would be the actual results of the Electoral College vote if the process were allowed to run its course. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, among others, had previously made noise about challenging election results in several swing states. And despite what many have debated, there was tangible potential for Pence to delay the certification for a couple of weeks to look into the evidence of significant vote-tampering and fraud.

How do we know that the vice president had the authority to stop the certification? Well, because the ability for the position of vice president to do just that was changed by a vote of Congress relatively recently after the events of January 6. Why would you change something that did not need to be changed?

Since the election of 2020, a lot of evidence has come out to justify the claims of fraud–stuffing of outside ballot boxes with illegal ballots, transporting ballots across state lines, blocking observers from seeing the vote counting, strange voting machine malfunctions, etc. Unless the people responsible for these actions are held responsible, we can expect the same fraud in 2024.

The article concludes:

Unless the country itself can see that the narrative presented by the Left regarding January 6, 2021, was a smoke screen for the real insurrection of November 3, 2020, America will need to brace itself for a repeat performance of that nefarious action on November 5, 2024.

When Taking Bribes, Make Sure The Origin Of The Product Is Not Traceable

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When taking bribes, unmarked bills are a good idea, other things can be risky–gold bars, for instance, have serial numbers. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez really should have considered that.

On December 4th, The New York Post reported the following:

Four of the gold bars Sen. Bob Menendez stashed at his home were previously stolen from the businessman accused of bribing the New Jersey Democrat, according to a report. 

The serial numbers on some of the gold found by the FBI during a June 2022 raid on Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ, home match identifiers that Fred Daibes reported to police after a 2013 armed robbery, according to NBC News. 

Robbers made off with $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars from Daibes’ Edgewater, NJ, home during the 2013 heist, the outlet reports.

Police later nabbed four suspects and recovered the stolen gold. 

The matching serial numbers indicate that authorities have directly linked at least some of the gold found in Menendez’s home to Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and Menendez fundraiser.

Daibes has been accused of bribing the senator for a series of favors, including help in disrupting a federal prosecution against him. 

“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in 2014 when questioned about the stolen gold. “They’re all stamped … you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”

The article concludes:

Menendez has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has refused to resign from the Senate, despite numerous calls for him to do so, even from fellow Democrats. 

Menendez and his wife are accused of accepting bribes from Daibes in exchange for the senator’s help shielding him from criminal prosecution in a bank fraud case.

The New Jersey Democrat allegedly helped Daibes by recommending President Biden pick Philip Sellinger, who the senator believed would apply a light touch to the case, for the post of New Jersey US attorney. 

If convicted on all charges, Menendez faces up to 45 years in prison.

I guess if you are a Democrat, you just don’t plan on having your house searched or a swat team arrive at six o’clock in the morning.

Keeping Elections Honest

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On Wednesday, The Connecticut Examiner posted an article about the results of a Bridgeport, Connecticut, primary election being overturned by a judge due to voter fraud.

The article reports:

A judge ruled on Wednesday to overturn the city’s Democratic primary election, initially won by incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim, following claims of absentee ballot fraud by his opponent, John Gomes.

After two weeks of evidentiary hearings for Gomes’s absentee ballot fraud lawsuit, Judge William Clark ordered a new Democratic primary based on 180 pieces of evidence presented by Gomes’s legal counsel.

In the 37-page ruling, Clark said the video footage presented by Bill Bloss – Gomes’s attorney – was particularly alarming.

“Mr. Ganim was also correct to be ‘shocked’ at what he saw on the video clips in evidence that were shown to him while he was on the witness stand,” Clark wrote. “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties.

Ganim was one the many city officials called to the Fairfield Judicial District Superior Courthouse for questioning, along with Wanda Geter-Pataky, vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee and operations specialist for the city, and Eneida Martinez, a former City Council member accused by Gomes of stuffing ballot dropboxes.

At the witness stand, Ganim told the court he was “shocked” by an 18-minute video – subpoenaed by Gomes from Bridgeport police – that appeared to show 12 instances of Geter-Pataky either depositing stacks of ballots herself or handing ballots to others from behind her reception desk, and four instances of Martinez dropping off ballots.

Asked about the footage during the hearings, both Geter-Pataky and Martinez asserted their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination . Ganim, who appeared to win the primary by 250 votes after a count of absentee ballots, denied any involvement in the alleged fraud.

There needs to be serious consequences for voter fraud. That is the only way that it will be stopped. This was a primary election where the Democrat party wanted to make sure their candidate won. Is there any doubt that they would do this is a major election?

Tampering With Evidence?

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The ongoing indictments of President Trump are getting a bit ridiculous. I am waiting to see if the government gets a search warrant to go to Mar-a-Lago to see if he has torn the tags off of his mattress. All the current indictments are doing is illustrating (for anyone who is actually paying attention) the two-tiered justice system. Now there are some questions about evidence tampering in the January 6th case against President Trump.

On Friday, Breitbart posted an article quoting Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on some aspects of the latest indictment.

The article reports:

Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says that under his own “fraud” standard, Special Counsel Jack Smith could be indicted for omitting a key portion of then-President Donald Trump’s speech in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

The indictment charges Trump with four counts, including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” But in a portion recounting Trump’s speech at the “Stop the Steal” rally, Smith repeats the errors made by House Democrats in Trump’s second impeachment trial: he focuses on Trump’s use of the phrase “fight like hell,” and omits a sentence highlighted by Trump’s defense team: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Dershowitz told the Megyn Kelly Show podcast on Friday that by his own standard, Smith could be charged with fraud, because of his omission of Trump’s “peaceful” rhetoric.

“Under the indictment itself, Jack Smith could be himself indicted. He told a direct lie in this indictment. He purported to describe the speech that President Trump made on January 6th. And he left out the key words, when President Trump said, ‘I want you to demonstrate peacefully and patriotically. You know, a lie by omission, under the law, can be as serious as a lie by commission.”

The fact that Smith repeated the error of the House impeachment managers would appear deliberate, because these phrases were the crux of Trump’s Senate trial. Trump’s lawyers even played footage of Democrats using similar “fight” rhetoric, to show its common usage.

Remember–only the political left is allowed to use the word “fight.”

Beware Of The IRS Trying To Give You Money

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On July 3rd, The Epoch Times posted an article about a new scam to separate Americans from their money.

The article reports:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a warning to taxpayers about a new scam mail scheme that attempts to trick people into believing the government owes them money.

“The new scheme involves a mailing coming in a cardboard envelope from a delivery service,” the IRS said in a statement on July 3.

Inside the cardboard envelope is a letter on IRS masthead while fraudulently claiming that the notice is “in relation to your unclaimed refund.”

While dangling the prospect of obtaining unclaimed tax refund dollars, the letter asks taxpayers to provide sensitive personal information, including detailed photographs of drivers’ licenses. The data that the scammers are trying to obtain can be used by thieves to try and obtain a tax refund or other sensitive financial information.

“This is just the latest in the long string of attempts by identity thieves posing as the IRS in hopes of tricking people into providing valuable personal information to steal identities and money, including tax refunds,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement.

The article gives guidelines for identifying the scam:

The scam letter includes a variety of warning signs, including strange punctuation and a mixture of different fonts, with some requests being awkwardly worded, such as: “A Clear Phone of Your Driver’s License That Clearly Displays All Four (4) Angles, Taken in a Place with Good Lighting.”

The fraudulent notification then asks for additional information that is sensitive, with the wording of the request also awkward.

“You’ll Need to Get This to Get Your Refunds After Filing. These Must Be Given to a Filing Agent Who Will Help You Submit Your Unclaimed Property Claim. Once You Send All The Information Please Try to Be Checking Your Email for Response From The Agents Thanks,” the letter reads, per the IRS.

The letter also includes some inaccurate information. Specifically, it claims that the deadline for filing tax refunds for those who have an extension to file is Oct. 17, 2023, while the correct deadline is actually Oct. 16.

“These scams can come in through email, text or even in special mailings. People should be careful to watch out for red flags that clearly mark these as IRS scams,” Werfel said.

The thing that is so annoying about some of the current scams is that the people doing them are probably smart enough to make an honest living but have chosen to attempt to cheat people instead. That’s sad.

Where Did The Money Go?

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On Sunday, Just the News posted an article about as much as $400 billion in COVID-19 unemployment relief that was probably lost due to fraud.

The article reports:

Reports indicate as much as $400 billion in COVID-19 unemployment relief were likely lost to waste and fraudsters. Lawmakers want answers.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Labor demanding documents and information related to the unemployment fraud.

“Since the Summer of 2020, repeated alerts from federal law enforcement agencies warned of targeted efforts involving organized cybercrime, foreign actors, and international crime rings using stolen identities of American citizens to obtain fraudulent unemployment benefits,” the letter said. “Fraud estimates range from $80 billion to as much as $400 billion, which is nearly half of all the COVID-19 unemployment aid.”

The Department of Labor’s Inspector General released a report in October showing that fraud varied by state but was significant nationwide.

“We found ETA and states did not ensure pandemic-related UI funds were paid only to eligible individuals promptly. Of the 4 states we tested, from March 28, 2020, through September 30, 2020, we estimated $30.4 billion of the $71.7 billion in PUA and FPUC benefits were paid improperly (42.4 percent),” the report said. “We estimated $9.9 billion of that was paid to likely fraudsters (13.8 percent). Notably, in the 4 states, 1 in 5 dollars initially paid in PUA benefits went to likely fraudsters.”

The article concludes:

The IG did lay out some reasons this waste and fraud occurred.

“ETA and states made significant efforts; however, they did not protect pandemic-related UI funds from historic levels of improper payments,” the report said. “We attribute this to four causes: states did not perform eligibility testing, ETA’s oversight was not timely enough, PUA initially allowed claimants to self-certify their eligibility, and ETA suspended 1 of their primary oversight tools for the first 3 months of the CARES Act. Furthermore, ETA’s interpretation of its regulations hindered the OIG’s timely and complete access to state UI claims data to assist in detecting and deterring fraud.”

There is no excuse for this.

The Problem With Mail-In Voting

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the recent primary in New York State. The primary was held on June 23. All voters had until May 29 to register online, in person at a local board of elections, or by mailing in a voter registration form.

The article reports:

How badly has the state of New York handled its vote-by-mail primary? Only today did the Associated Press make the call on the race in NY-16, concluding three weeks after the election that Rep. Eliot Engel lost to his primary challenger, progressive insurgent Jamaal Bowman — by sixteen points. It took that long to get through enough of the mail-in ballots and navigate the opaque reporting on the count for the AP to reach a firm conclusion in a landslide for Bowman.

That race is no fluke, either. The New York Times reports that some races have only a handful of ballots counted, and that outcomes of many of the primary contests have yet to be determined, more than three weeks after the election day. This portends disaster in November, the Times warns:

More than three weeks after the New York primaries, election officials have not yet counted an untold number of mail-in absentee ballots, leaving numerous closely watched races unresolved, including three key Democratic congressional contests.

The absentee ballot count — greatly inflated this year because the state expanded the vote-by-mail option because of the coronavirus pandemic — has been painstakingly slow, and hard to track, with no running account of the vote totals available.

In some cases, the tiny number of ballots counted has bordered on the absurd: In the 12th Congressional District, where Representative Carolyn B. Maloney is fighting for her political life against her challenger, Suraj Patel, only 800 of some 65,000 absentee ballots had been tabulated as of Wednesday, according to Mr. Patel, though thousands had been disqualified. …

The delays in New York’s primaries raise huge concerns about how the state will handle the general election in November, and may offer a cautionary note for other states as they weigh whether to embrace, and how to implement, a vote-by-mail system because of the pandemic.

Most voter fraud occurs in absentee ballots or mail-in ballots. This is the place where ballot harvesting occurs–a person can go into a nursing home, get people with limited cognitive ability to sign a ballot, and fill out the ballot themselves and turn it in. Ballots can be stolen from mailboxes, filled out, and turned in. It is a nightmare to anyone who wants an honest election.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

The vote-by-mail system, however, truly is a disaster, and not just over security concerns. The timelines in our Constitution are too tight for the kinds of delays seen in this year’s primaries. We are at risk of being without a legitimate Congress as well as a legitimate president by the time the deadlines for both are reached. The only way to ensure that we can meet those deadlines is to vote in person by paper ballots utilizing optical-scan technology for fast and accurate counts. The delay from a relative small number of contests in that system where absentee ballots could make the difference will be easy to absorb, but we can’t wait several weeks to confirm outcomes in races with double-digit in-person vote gaps.

Stop pretending this is a Trump problem. This is an electoral legitimacy problem in more than one aspect, and it’s time we treated it as such. If we can go to Walmart in this pandemic, we certainly can figure out how to vote in person to choose this country’s leadership.

Protecting Election Integrity

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Red State Observer is reporting today that the Texas Supreme Court has temporarily put on hold an expansion of voting by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.

The article reports:

Siding with Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Supreme Court blocked a state appeals court decision that allowed voters who lack immunity to the virus to qualify for absentee ballots by citing a disability. That appellate decision upheld a lower court’s order that would have allowed more people to qualify to vote by mail. The state’s Supreme Court has not weighed the merits of the case.

It’s the latest in an ongoing legal squabble that in the last three days has resulted in daily changes to who can qualify for a ballot they can fill out at home and mail in.

The problem with voting by mail is that there are very few controls on it and it is the area when voter fraud is most prevalent. If it is safe to go to WalMart and social distance, then it is safe to vote while respecting social distancing. This is nothing more than an attempt to stuff ballot boxes legally.

Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop

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The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday that according to a Sean Hannity podcast, John Solomon has stated that he knows of few witnesses who have appeared before a DC grand jury.

The article reports:

John Solomon told Hannity he believes that Durham’s charges will start with Kevin Clinesmith, the lawyer who fraudulently changed a document to deceive the FISA court.

“What about all the people that signed the FISA applications knowing…none of it was verified?” Hannity asked Solomon.

John Solomon said he doesn’t believe Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein, Yates and others will be prosecuted for signing the FISA applications, however they still may not be in the clear.

John Solomon did say that John Durham is focusing on false testimonies based on the grand jury subpoenas.

“It’s possible that some people who gave false representations to Congress could get prosecuted for those false representations,” he added.

The article goes on to list examples of people who perjured themselves before Congress–James Comey, Andrew McCabe and John Brennan. Please follow the link to the article to see the details of that perjury. At this point there is no indication these people will ever be held accountable for their crimes. In order to get a conviction, you would have to have a Washington, D.C., jury that was willing to convict them. I find that highly unlikely.

Why Government Policies Matter

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article detailing some of what is happening on our southern border.

The article reports:

More than 600 children were “recycled” through the border over the last year, including some who were carried across eight times, by a different person each time, looking to exploit lax policies to gain a foothold in the U.S., a top ICE official told Congress on Wednesday.

And those are only cases that were detected, officials said.

The recycled children are one of the more disturbing aspects of illegal border flow over the last 12 months, which set records for the number of children and families who snuck into the U.S.

The families were drawn by a lax policy, imposed by a federal court, that gives adults a quick release into communities as long as they brought a son or daughter with them.

The result was massive levels of fraud, with adults renting or outright buying unrelated children in order to present themselves as a family, authorities said. In some cases it was a one-off, but in other instances children were “recycled” across the border multiple times, said Derek N. Benner, acting deputy director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Note that the policy in effect was imposed by a federal court–it was not legislated and it was not instituted by the President. The Founding Fathers did not envision a country where a federal court could overrule a President. They envisioned a country where Congress would take up the responsibility given to it to make laws that protect our borders and secure our country.

The article concludes:

Also Wednesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a new policy that would block asylum-seekers from being granted work permits until after they win their asylum cases.

The goal is to remove one of the incentives for bogus family claims. Under current policy migrants who demand asylum and clear the first hurdle can get work permits after a waiting period, giving them a chance to deepen ties even though the majority end up being deemed ineligible for asylum.

“Illegal aliens are gaming our asylum system for economic opportunity, which undermines the integrity of our immigration system and delays relief for legitimate asylum seekers in need of humanitarian protection,” said Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director at USCIS.

How Much Of Our Tax Money Is Wisely Spent?

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On Sunday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about fraud in the government’s food stamp program.

The article reports:

According to a new report produced by the Government and Accountability Office (GAO), at least $1 billion in food stamp benefits are “trafficked annually,” meaning they are fraudulently used. The extent of the fraud is uncertain, the GAO warns, estimating the abuse of the program could be as high as $4.7 billion.

About 20 million lower-income households receive benefits from the $64 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, to buy food. But GAO found that instead of being used for food, many stores are defrauding the program by “selling” cash instead of food.

“For example, a store might give a person $50 in exchange for $100 in benefits – then pocket the difference,” GAO explains.

The article explains one possible remedy:

The fraud, known as “retailer trafficking,” costs taxpayers at least $1 billion. However, the real cost could be “anywhere from $960 million to $4.7 billion,” the GAO adds.

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank advocating reform, launched a “Stop the Scam initiative” to raise awareness of the widespread problem.

“Welfare fraud is one of the biggest untold stories of the last decade, robbing resources from the truly needy and eroding public trust in the integrity of our welfare programs,” Sam Adolphsen, vice president of executive affairs at FGA, said in a statement. “While the bad-actor food stamp retailers exposed in this GAO report are in part to blame, we must not lose sight of the accountability that falls upon the food stamp recipient willing to commit fraud and abuse the system.”

The FGA hopes to reduce fraud and abuse at the state level by uncovering discrepancies in each state’s eligibility systems by regularly reviewing their processes.

Public assistance works best when it is closest to the recipient. That way the people providing the assistance know who is in need and who is taking advantage of the program. It also allows those administering the program to spot fraud more easily. Every program in Washington needs to audited for fraud and cleaned up. That alone might make it unnecessary for Congress to raise the debt ceiling every few months.

The article concludes:

Finally, GAO recommended that FNS should “determine the appropriate scope and time frames for reauthorizing high-risk stores,” increase penalties for retail traffickers, and establish performance measures for its trafficking prevention activities.

The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 gave the USDA the authority to strengthen penalties for retailers that commit fraud, but as of November 2018, FNS had not done so.

“By failing to take timely action to strengthen penalties, FNS has not taken full advantage of an important tool for deterring trafficking,” GAO states.

When the GAO confirms what actions FNS has taken in response to its recommendations, it plans to provide updated information to the public, the agency states. It states that the FNS generally agreed with its findings.

The USDA/FNS did not respond to requests to comment for this story.

 

Election Fraud Is Different Than Voter Fraud

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The program listed below is archived at cctaxpayers.com.

 

Sunday at 11 am and 8 pm, Wake-up Call is broadcast on WTKF 107.1. This week’sl broadcast will feature a discussion with Major David Goetze (Ret.).  Major Dave served in the Military Police of the U.S. Army as an investigator dealing with computer data. Major Dave has closely examined the public records of the 2016 and 2018 elections in North Carolina and found some very interesting anomalies. He will be discussing his findings on Wake-up Call this Sunday. I can promise you that the show will be eye-opening.

The Case For Voter ID

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The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday with the following headline, “Study: Voter ID Laws Don’t Stop People Voting.”

The article reports:

Strict voter ID laws do not suppress turnout, a new paper finds, regardless of sex, race, Hispanic identity, or party affiliation.

Requiring photo ID to vote is a hotly contested subject in American political discourse. Proponents argue that it is necessary to insure against fraud and preserve the integrity of the American electoral system. Opponents argue that it will disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters—many of whom would be poor and of color—who are unable to easily obtain ID.

In total, 10 states, ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin, require voters to show ID in order to vote. Seven of those states require a photo ID, and three do not. An additional 25 states “request” that voters display ID, but may still permit them to vote on a provision ballot if they cannot. The remaining states “use other methods to verify the identity of voters,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The new research, from an economics professor at the University of Bologna and another at Harvard Business School, indicates that “strict” voting laws of the type implemented in those ten states do not have a statistically significant effect on voter turnout.

A few years ago, North Carolina tested a voter ID system during a primary election. Turnout was higher than in previous primary elections. The voter ID requirement did not suppress the vote. The system allowed the poll workers to scan the voter’s driver’s license in order to print the correct ballot. Implementing that system allowed the lines to move quickly and resulted in more efficient voting for everyone. The idea that voter ID limits voters is a myth. You need an ID to do a lot of everyday things, so most people have an acceptable form of ID.

The article concludes:

At the same time, the study’s authors use the same data to examine the actual effect of strict voter ID laws on voter fraud itself, and similarly find no statistically significant effect. Using two datasets of voter fraud cases (which represent a cumulative 2,000 proven or hypothesized events over eight years), the study examines the relationship between laws and frequency of measured voter fraud, finding no evidence of a change after implementation.

This finding is naturally limited by the extremely small number of voter fraud cases actually identified: fewer than one per million people per year. It is possible that voter ID laws would be more effective suppressing fraud in a context where it was more evidently prevalent; as is, the authors estimate that the laws themselves only cover about 0.3 to 0.1 offenses per million people per year.

In total, then, the paper suggests that voter ID laws are not suppressive, but also that they do not have much of an impact on elections overall.

“Our results suggest that efforts both to safeguard electoral integrity and enfranchise more voters may be better served through other reforms,” it concludes.

Voter ID will not end voter fraud. It will, however, make it more difficult.

Voter Fraud In Florida

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Below is an affidavit regarding the current ballot count in Broward County.

11 03 2016 Chelsey Smith SO… by on Scribd

The affidavit is posted at various places on the intehe rnet. The Gateway Pundit is one of those places.

The Gateway Pundit reports:

Former Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeff Kottkamp tweeted that there is an affidavit from a Florida campaign worker who states that he/she saw Broward County Elections staff filling out blank ballots!

In a previous article, The Gateway Pundit reported:

Matt Caldwell has followed Gov. Rick Scott’s lead in filing a lawsuit Friday against the Broward County Supervisor of Elections in one of the state’s closest races.

The campaign of the Republican candidate for agricultural commissioner sent a news release Friday afternoon announcing that his attorneys filed a lawsuit in the 17th judicial circuit “asking the court to protect the integrity of all ballots and all public records relating to the election for Commissioner of Agriculture.”

Caldwell thought he had edged out a victory in the agricultural commissioner race Tuesday night when he had about a 40,000 vote lead over Democratic candidate Nikki Fried.

But the latest vote count shows Caldwell losing by 3,120 votes to Fried. The difference between the candidates is .04 percent, signaling an automatic recount, and a likely manual recount.

This whole thing should be shut down immediately and those involved arrested and put in jail.  This impacts the entire nation, not just the crooks running Broward County elections.

The election results from Broward County need to be declared invalid. They should not be counted in any Florida race. If anyone complains about their vote not being counted, they should be reminded to choose honest election officials if they want their vote counted. The other solution is to fire everyone involved, charge them with voter fraud, appoint honest people to count the votes, and hold another election.