Stop Another Major Medicaid Money-Laundering Scam Before It’s Too Late
States are abusing intergovernmental transfers at patients’ and taxpayers’ expense.States are abusing intergovernmental transfers at patients’ and taxpayers’ expense.Minnesota’s fraud scandal has an Arizona sequel
Over the past two months, Minnesota’s widening fraud scandals have drawn national attention. Investigators and watchdogs have uncovered what appear to be major abuses of taxpayer dollars tied to fraudulent day care and health care operations, and Democrat officials who oversaw the programs look, at minimum, asleep at the switch.
Minnesota isn’t alone.
Arizona’s reputation rests on independence and straight dealing. Katie Hobbs and Kris Mayes have replaced that image with stonewalling, favoritism, and excuses.
In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) have spent the past three years building a record that looks less like competent governance and more like protection for a corrupt status quo. Again and again, their offices have resisted transparency, shielded allies, and resisted oversight — while Republicans in the legislature have tried to drag basic accountability back into view.
Whether in Minnesota, Arizona, or any other jurisdiction across the country, taxpayers deserve better than a government that treats disclosure as optional and oversight as an attack.
Inaugural fund secrecy
Arizona governors often raise private money to cover inaugural expenses and then transfer leftover funds to the state. Hobbs broke that norm. Her office resisted disclosing donor information and withheld more than $1 million that should have gone back to taxpayers, triggering a direct clash with the legislature.
Lawmakers responded by writing the old precedent into law: Future administrations must fully report inauguration fundraising and spending. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support — proof that this wasn’t a partisan gripe. Even Democrats understood that Hobbs had created a mess for herself.
A pay-to-play stench
The most serious cloud over Hobbs’ administration is an alleged pay-to-play scandal involving the Department of Child Safety.
The Arizona Republic reported that Sunshine Residential Homes, a for-profit group home operator with state contracts, received a significant rate increase approved under Hobbs’ administration after donating to Hobbs’ inaugural fund. The same request had been denied under the outgoing Republican administration.
The reporting also noted that Hobbs’ DCS did not approve comparable increases for other group homes. At the same time, the DCS ended contracts with 16 group homes — making Sunshine’s preferred treatment look even more suspect.
Mayes announced an investigation, then tried to push Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and the Arizona auditor general off the case — even though legislators had asked those offices to investigate. Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee publicly rejected Mayes’ attempt and urged the county and auditor investigations to continue.
Since then, Mayes’ office has offered little public clarity. Nearly two years without meaningful updates invites the obvious question: Was the “investigation” a press release designed to run out the clock?
Hobbs then vetoed a bill last session meant to close loopholes and prevent future executives from gaming the system.
SNAP: Fighting anti-fraud efforts
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program doles out nearly $100 billion a year. It also attracts fraud. The Government Accountability Office flagged $320 million in stolen benefits between October 2022 and December 2024. The U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2023 estimated that around 12% of SNAP benefits were fraudulent.
That should make anti-fraud measures easy to support.
Instead, Mayes sued the Trump administration over efforts to gather more information from states about SNAP beneficiaries. Hobbs refused to comply with data requests. Whatever one thinks about SNAP’s scope, no serious public servant should block reasonable efforts to root out fraud and protect taxpayers.
When elected officials fight transparency in a program that moves billions of dollars, they aren’t defending the vulnerable. They are protecting a system that invites abuse.
RELATED: Mike Lee reveals the real victims of Somali fraud: ‘It is not the rich people who suffer’
A shady operator
Kris Mayes has other problems.
U.S. Rep. Abraham Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) has asked the Department of Justice to investigate allegations of a pay-to-play bribery scheme involving Mayes and outside political groups, claiming she traded official actions for political benefits.
And late last year, a top official in Mayes’ State Government Division was arrested on charges related to controlling and trafficking stolen property. The city of Peoria had reportedly warned Mayes’ office nearly two years earlier about serious allegations involving that official, yet she remained in a position of authority until her arrest.
Arizona’s reputation rests on independence and straight dealing. Hobbs and Mayes have replaced that image with stonewalling, favoritism, and excuses.
Voters should take note. If Arizonans want honest government, they will have to demand it — at the ballot box and through aggressive oversight — before the culture of corruption becomes permanent.
The real villains aren’t in the movies. They’re looting America’s welfare system.
Somali pirates. Dead people “billing” taxpayers. Foreign terror networks thriving on Medicaid scams. Hackers stealing identities to collect benefits.
That lineup sounds like an over-the-top Hollywood heist movie. Americans now read versions of it on the front page.
Americans should treat this caper as a wake-up call. Elected leaders should treat it as an emergency.
Federal prosecutors charged 78 Somali immigrants with allegedly stealing more than $1 billion from taxpayers. National outlets noticed, including the see-no-immigrant-evil New York Times. Prosecutors also say suspected Medicaid fraud in Minnesota may top $9 billion, with new allegations and evidence surfacing by the day.
Hollywood can’t compete with numbers like that. In “Die Hard,” the crooks chased $640 million. Danny Ocean’s crew in “Ocean’s 11” made off with a mere $160 million. Minnesota’s real-life scammers allegedly went after far more, and they exploited programs meant to help the vulnerable.
Americans should treat this caper as a wake-up call. Elected leaders should treat it as an emergency: Prosecute the thieves, close the loopholes, and change the incentives that let fraudsters treat public benefits like an ATM.
For perspective, the fraud under investigation approaches the size of Somalia’s entire government budget and equals roughly 12% of Somalia’s economy, based on recent estimates. Minnesota’s Somali population equals about 0.5% of Somalia’s population and about 2.5% of the Twin Cities metro. Yet prosecutors say a small number of people allegedly moved sums that rival major industries back home.
Worse, investigators say some stolen money went overseas. In the Feeding Our Future case and related investigations, federal prosecutors have alleged that some proceeds flowed to al-Shabaab, a terrorist group the United States has targeted for years. If those allegations hold, taxpayers didn’t just fund fraud. They helped bankroll an enemy.
Minnesota’s scandal also exposes a national contradiction. Washington wages war abroad, welcomes refugees at home, and writes checks through the same federal programs that criminals can exploit — while the national debt nears $39 trillion.
Minnesota’s political class added its own layer of absurdity. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) built a profitable career calling America racist. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) delivered his re-election victory speech in Somali just days before the scope of these cases made headlines. Symbolic gestures came easy. Basic oversight did not.
Gov. Tim Walz (D) still owes voters answers. Did incompetence drive this disaster, or did indifference do the work? Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem argues both played a role. Reports now suggest state employees blew the whistle years ago about lax controls and sloppy management. Voters heard little of it when elections still hung in the balance.
RELATED: Trump has the chance to end the welfare free-for-all Minnesota exposed
Walz reportedly knew about major fraud risks as early as 2020. His administration later resumed funding after recipients sued, accusing the state of racism. The Walz administration also handed an “outstanding refugee award” in 2021 to a woman now charged in connection with fraud — facts that undercut today’s alibis.
Federal investigators deserve credit. The Departments of Justice and Treasury have pursued these cases aggressively. House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has opened another congressional probe. Prosecutions matter, but prevention matters more.
A new law President Trump signed this summer aims to make fraud more difficult to pull off. It requires states to recheck eligibility for able-bodied adults on Medicaid every six months instead of annually. For the first time, it also forces states to absorb more of the cost when they let fraud run rampant.
Those reforms should move quickly from paper to practice. States, red and blue, should implement them immediately. Fraudsters thrive on delay, confusion, and political excuses.
Taxpayer fraud deserves full prosecution. Political leaders who enable it deserve accountability too — whether they turned a blind eye, ignored whistleblowers, or refused to enforce the law. Every state in the Union should move now, or Minnesota’s scandal will spread.
Democrats Hate Anyone Who Doesn’t Love Crime And Fraud As Much As They Do — Even Leftists
The first rule of Democrat Club is that you aren't supposed to mention the fraud and the grift.WSJ’s Tulsi Gabbard Hoax Is Straight From The Russia-Collusion Playbook
The real story is not the supposed scandal. It is the relentless recycling of the same hoax playbook and the media’s grotesque complicity.'USADF is garbage': Senior US foreign aid official will plead guilty to taking kickbacks, lying to feds
The U.S. African Development Foundation, a foreign aid agency that poured millions of taxpayer dollars into African initiatives over the past four decades, desperately fought the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the agency and audit its finances.
It's now painfully obvious why there was so much resistance to transparency at the U.S. Agency for International Development-adjacent outfit.
Months after government watchdog Judicial Watch sued the USADF for records regarding its expenditures and in the wake of allegations that agency officials were abusing their positions and misusing funds, the USADF's director of financial management, Mathieu Zahui, is now admitting wrongdoing.
'The USADF Director of Financial Management's fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people.'
Zahui, an official who denied DOGE access to the agency's financial records last year, has agreed to plead guilty to taking secret payments and lying to federal law enforcement officers about those payments.
"Mathieu Zahui is charged with accepting payments from a government contractor and then abusing his position by directing USADF funds to that contractor for little-to-no work," Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said in a statement on Friday. "Corruption by senior officials representing the United States cheats American taxpayers and rigs the system against honest work."
RELATED: 'STOP THE SCAMS!' Trump announces new office in DOJ dedicated to investigating fraud
The Justice Department indicated in court documents obtained by Blaze News that Zahui, 59, arranged for the USADF to pay vendors and contractors through a Kenya-based company owned by a government contractor Zahui has known since 1999.
"Zahui arranged for ADF to pay certain vendors and contractors through Company-1 rather than pay them directly," the DOJ noted in the filing. "Zahui then approved invoices for Company-1 and CC-1 that included mark-ups ranging from 17% to 66% on these pass-through invoices, even when Company-1 did no work justifying the mark-up."
The company belonging to Zahui's associate submitted over 20 pass-through invoices for the African Development Foundation for which Zahui had USADF shell out at least $617,625.49. His associate's company allegedly kept $134,886.34 of that sum as a mark-up for "logistical support."
Between 2019 and 2022, Zahui personally and directly received $12,000 in cash payments, the DOJ alleged.
Zahui and his associate's company unsurprisingly failed to disclose the details of their little arrangement to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which oversaw and authorized USADF's payment to external parties.
Adding insult to injury, Zahui told federal agents when interviewed in 2024 that he had never received any kickback from his friend's company.
The USADF financial director has, however, since agreed to plead guilty to one count of accepting gratuities from his associate's company and one count of making a false statement to a federal law enforcement officer. He faces a maximum of two years in prison for the first charge and five years in prison for the second.
Peter Marocco, former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance and USAID deputy administrator, wrote in response to the agreement, "USADF is garbage. A culture of defiant fraud, waste and abuse that must come to an end. This is only scratching the surface. Abolish it!"
"The USADF Director of Financial Management's fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people," said Sean Bottary, the acting assistant inspector general at the USAID's Office of Inspector General.
The USADF was one of the agencies President Donald Trump ordered the elimination of "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law" in February 2025.
Blaze News has reached out to USADF for comment.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
More Virgin Islands corruption: Another appointee of Democrat governor reaps whirlwind
Albert Bryan, the Democrat governor of the Virgin Islands, has apparently surrounded himself in recent years with fraudsters and grafters.
Bryan's former commissioner of the territory's parks and recreation department, Calvert White, was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison following his conviction for one count of honest services wire fraud and one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds.
'This is unacceptable.'
The sentencing — relatively light given that the fraud offense carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and the bribery offense carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison — took place just weeks after the Democrat governor's former police commissioner and former budget director were found guilty of extensive corruption.
White, who resigned last January, solicited and accepted a bribe from David Whitaker, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Mon Ethos Pro Support — a bribe that was facilitated by local businessman Benjamin Hendricks.
In exchange for $16,000 to later be paid by Hendricks, White agreed to help Whitaker obtain a contract valued at over $1.4 million for the installation of security cameras at U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Sports, Parks, and Recreation properties.
The Justice Department indicated that as part of the scheme, which lasted from late 2023 until the FBI intervened in June 2024, White provided confidential bidding information to Whitaker and proactively worked in an official capacity to ensure that Whitaker would get the contract.
"Calvert White rigged a public bid process in exchange for a bribe," said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the DOJ's Criminal Division. "He abused the trust of those who live in the community he was supposed to serve."
While not ordered to pay a fine, White was required to forfeit $5,000, the amount he received from Whitaker via Hendricks as partial payment for the contract, reported the St. Thomas Source. He will reportedly wear a GPS monitoring bracelet until he surrenders to authorities on March 2.
For his role in the scheme, Hendricks was sentenced last week to 68 months in prison.
"Public officials take an oath based on trust and assume a responsibility of service to the people," said Claudia Dubravetz, acting special agent in charge of the FBI's San Juan field office. "When that trust is violated through acts of corruption, it undermines confidence in government and harms the communities it is meant to serve. This is unacceptable."
Whitaker, who pleaded guilty in 2024 to two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery and is set to be sentenced later this year, was apparently also in cahoots with former Virgin Islands Police Department Commissioner Ray Martinez and former Virgin Islands Office of Management and Budget Director Jenifer O'Neal.
Martinez was found guilty last month of five counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, one count of money laundering conspiracy, and two counts of obstruction of justice. O'Neal was found guilty of two counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
The DOJ indicated that Martinez accepted roughly $100,000 in bribe payments from Whitaker — "including cash, luxury travel, personal expenses, private-school tuition, and restaurant equipment" — in exchange for wielding his official authority to approve invoices and award Whitaker a $1.4 million contract federally funded under the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
O'Neal knowingly approved a $70,000 inflated invoice under that contract and, in exchange, accepted a $17,730 lease payment for her business in federal funds from the inflated invoice.
Blaze News has reached out to Gov. Bryan's office for comment.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
The GOP can’t ‘wield’ the administrative state without being corrupted by it
Many Americans have watched Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy “The Lord of the Rings.” And many have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. Some can quote whole passages and trace Tolkien’s deliberate references to the life of Christ and the horror of modern war.
Maybe House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) live in that camp. If not, they should.
The Republicans’ plan cannot be ‘use federal power while we have it, then trust the next guys.’
A crucial scene comes early in the saga. The council debates what to do with the One Ring, the ultimate source of power. Boromir makes an understandable, dangerous suggestion — a perfect expression of fallen man’s temptation: “Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy. Let us use it against him.”
Aragorn stops him with two sentences rooted in humility and truth: “You cannot wield it. None of us can.”
That is the lesson Republicans must learn now, while they still hold majorities.
Dismantle the machine, don’t borrow it
Many supporters of President Trump want Congress to act boldly. They also want something more important: They want Republicans to roll back the reach and scope of the federal government while they can. If the GOP refuses, Democrats will inherit the same machinery and use it without restraint. Not someday. Soon.
If you think I exaggerate by calling Democrats the enemy or warning that we are doomed, consider a recent message from the second-highest-ranking elected congressional Democrat in the country, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Jeffries posted a video of White House adviser Stephen Miller on X.com and wrote: “Donald Trump will leave office long before the five-year statute of limitations expires. You are hereby put on notice.”
Jeffries did not allege a crime. He did not explain what Miller did wrong. He did not argue facts or law. He issued a threat: We will punish you later because we can.
That is what Republicans keep forgetting. The federal government’s power does not idle in neutral. It exists to be used. If it remains in place, someone will use it — and progressives have already shown what they want to do with it.
Which raises the central point: Nobody can safely wield that power. Not congressional Republicans. Not any administration. The correct move is not to grab the weapon and promise better behavior. The correct move is to destroy the weapon.
Fraud stories shine a bright light
Start with something as basic as fraud.
Look at the unraveling of the Somali day-care scandal in Minnesota and the billions of stolen tax dollars. That story grew so large that it helped end Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz’s re-election ambitions. Yet the government did not uncover it.
Not the Government Accountability Office. Not the Congressional Budget Office. Not the Office of Management and Budget. Not House or Senate oversight committees. Not the IRS. Not the Small Business Administration. Not the armies of full-time staffers inside federal agencies reporting up to inspectors general whose job description exists for this very purpose.
All that government power — and it did nothing.
RELATED: America now looks like a marriage headed for divorce — with no exit
The scandal came to light because of the tenacity of a 23-year-old guy with a camera. If the federal machine can miss fraud on that scale, imagine what else it misses.
Fraud saturates the system. Estimates run as high as $500 billion — roughly 7% of the $6.8 trillion federal budget. That budget still reflects COVID-era spending levels. In 2019, Washington spent $4.45 trillion. Why did we never return to pre-COVID levels?
Because money is power. And like Boromir, too many people convince themselves they can wield it.
Ethics are not enough
Energy policy shows the same temptation in real time.
My nonprofit organization, Power the Future, sent another letter to House and Senate oversight committees and to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging investigations into Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm. In the final days of the Biden administration, Granholm awarded $100 billion in green-energy grants — more than the previous 15 years combined. Many recipients had previously supported her political campaigns.
Green money poured out of Washington through the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated $60 billion for “environmental justice” — a phrase so deliberately amorphous that it has no fixed meaning. Team Biden spent $1 trillion “going green,” a statistic Vice President Kamala Harris bragged about during her lone 2024 debate with Donald Trump.
That entire structure still stands.
Nothing prevents the current energy secretary, Chris Wright, from spending billions on his favorite projects except his ethics. I believe Wright has ethics in abundance. We should feel grateful. But one man’s ethics do not qualify as a system of government.
The next secretary could be worse than Granholm. If the power remains, someone will use it.
RELATED: Nuke the filibuster or brace for the next impeachment campaign
Empty the arsenal
Just as in Tolkien’s masterpiece, our enemies do not wait quietly. They scheme. They train. They amass armies of lawyers, activists, operatives, and bureaucrats. They build institutional pipelines that outlast elections. They do not go home after losing once. They plan the return.
Republicans need to plan as well — and their plan cannot be “use federal power while we have it, then trust the next guys.”
One party will not hold Washington forever. When conservatives lose power, they should make sure the left inherits a reduced federal government: weaker, narrower, stripped of the patronage systems and enforcement tools that now function as political weapons.
That is why it is incumbent upon congressional Republicans to do everything in their power — everything — to destroy the Ring.
America’s founders envisioned a weak federal government for this reason. In America’s 250th year, Congress should act like it understands the danger of concentrated power. If Republicans keep the machinery intact, they will regret it. If the Ring finds its next master, it will not spare the people who once held it.
Conservatives can’t barbecue their way through national collapse
Conservatives want to be left alone. They have families, jobs, churches, hobbies. They love their country, but they stay busy and comfortable. Politics feels like something for other people — activists, ideologues, the perpetually aggrieved. The left may dream of tearing the system down in a fiery Marxist revolution, but one solid vote every couple of years or so should keep the crazies in check. Then it’s back to work, back to Little League, back to the barbecue.
That belief sustained many on the right for decades. It has become a liability.
A vote followed by retreat no longer suffices. Saving the country requires engagement, sacrifice, and the willingness to place political reality over personal comfort.
The sunshine conservative lives under the assumption that the American system more or less runs itself, that excesses can be corrected with minimal effort, and that power remains constrained by shared norms. Those assumptions no longer hold. The times that try men’s souls have returned, and the sunshine conservative is about to discover that comfort carries a cost.
For years, a bipartisan consensus reshaped the country through mass immigration. Call it conspiracy if you like, but incentives explain it better.
Democrats saw a reliable path to permanent power. Immigrants arrive without wealth, social capital, or political leverage. They gravitate toward the party that promises redistribution and protection. Every program — health care, housing, loans, benefits — tilts toward newcomers. Open borders grow government, entrench dependency, and expand the progressive patronage machine.
Republican incentives looked different but proved just as corrosive. Conservative voters opposed mass immigration, legal and illegal alike, but party leadership feared one thing above all else: being called racist.
Progressive programming successfully framed the idea of America as a homeland — run for the benefit of its people — as morally suspect. Any attempt to articulate national interest became “nativism.” Chamber of Commerce Republicans exploited that fear, importing millions of workers willing to accept suppressed wages while silencing critics through ritual denunciation.
While the country changed, conservatives largely stood aside. The transformation unsettled them, but lawn care got cheaper and food delivery faster. The sunshine conservative preferred comfort to confrontation. Political activism felt vulgar. Winners, after all, make money and buy boats.
Now the bill has come due.
Human trafficking. Drug flows. Violent crime. Overcrowded hospitals. Stagnant wages. Exploding housing costs. The social fabric frays under the weight of policies designed to benefit elites while disciplining everyone else.
RELATED: Aristotle’s ancient guide to tyranny reads like a modern manual
The Trump administration’s effort to remove the worst offenders collides with a system addicted to inflow. Obvious solutions exist — employer enforcement, E-Verify, ending the H-1B visa scam, taxing remittances heavily — but those measures threaten donor interests. Instead, enforcement proceeds piecemeal, state by state, criminal by criminal.
Each attempt to exercise authority triggers panic among mainstream conservatives. They fret about optics. They warn about norms. They clutch abstractions while the left shoots at or runs over federal agents, storms churches, and treats public order as optional. Establishment voices agonize over power even as their opponents wield it without hesitation.
A friend of mine returned from the Global War on Terror with what doctors labeled post-traumatic stress disorder. The diagnosis missed the point. His trauma didn’t come from violence alone. It came from clarity. He had lived in a world where stakes mattered, where power operated openly, where failure carried consequences. Returning to a culture submerged in therapeutic language, pronouns, and safe spaces proved disorienting. Everyone else lived inside a fantasy and demanded that he play along.
Eventually, he learned to stay quiet. He still regards much of what surrounds him as childish and unmoored from reality.
That reaction mirrors what many feel toward sunshine conservatives. They cling to a story about politics that bears no resemblance to how power functions. When confronted with evidence, they demand that reality conform to their narrative. It never does. That narrative existed to pacify them, to make them manageable. They defend it with the same fervor with which the left defends its own delusions.
Each crisis cracks the façade. An assassination. A church invasion. A city surrendered to disorder. Every time, a few more conservatives wake up — only to be swarmed by those demanding a return to small talk about tax rates and process. The problem never lay with those who saw the danger. It lay with those insisting everyone else look away.
RELATED: The left’s ‘fascism’ routine is a permission slip for violence
The question no longer concerns policy tweaks. It concerns survival. One side believes the country deserves preservation and repair. The other treats it as illegitimate and disposable. That divide cannot be bridged by nostalgia or proceduralism.
The sunshine conservative era has ended. Saving the country requires engagement, sacrifice, and the willingness to place political reality over personal comfort. It requires choosing the future of one’s children over quarterly returns. It requires the disciplined use of power to defend the nation’s institutions, borders, and communities — even when that makes polite society uncomfortable.
A vote followed by retreat no longer suffices. The fantasy that it does belongs with other comforting lies. The right can either shed it or be ruled by those who never believed it in the first place.
Renee Good Gave Her Life To Protect Child Rapists And Killers From ICE Arrest
ICE in recent days has arrested Sriudorn Phaivan, a criminal illegal with a long rap sheet, including strongarm sodomy of a boy and a girl.Today's top stories
www.theblaze.com
thefederalist.com
www.theblaze.com