Free Republic

More massive fraud has been uncovered in California. Only a day after the state’s Attorney-General Rob Bonta dismissed as ”baseless” claims of widespread fraud raging across the state, the Small Business Administration announced they’ve uncovered $8.6 billion in dodgy COVID-era loans. SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler announced Friday the agency has suspended more than 111,000 California borrowers suspected of committing fraud during the pandemic. They are accused of collecting money under the paycheck protection and economic injury disaster loans from the federal government that were supposed to ease the economic burden from COVID. “Once again, the Trump SBA is taking decisive...

California attorney general has lashed out at what he says are are “baseless claims” from the Trump administration about widespread fraud in the state. California has been a frequent target of the Trump administration’s fight against fraud. In recent weeks Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has made claims about hospice care facilities allegedly draining billions in taxpayer dollars. “Trump claims California is wasting money when in reality our programs are helping lower income individuals and lower income families get healthcare, food and housing assistance,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said on Thursday. “Trump claims, wrongly, California...

NFL-backed Human Development Fund shares an address with shell company featured in fraud scandal, among other links Chuck Ross. February 2, 2026 Human Development Fund, an upstart Islamic charity touted by the National Football League and various Muslim influencers, professes to provide "hot meals" to orphans in Gaza. But a Washington Free Beacon investigation found the group’s founders have an array of links to the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which more than 80 people conspired to steal $250 million from a federal program designed to give free meals to poor Minnesota children. HDF founder and CEO Abdirahman Kariye is...

Embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass secretly altered the official Palisades Fire response report to downplay the failures made by the city and fire department when the deadly blaze erupted, a new report said. Bass, after seeing an early draft of the after-action report, wanted key findings of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s shortcomings scrubbed or watered down — and even warned then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva the unedited conclusions could expose the city to legal liability, sources close to the Democrat’s staff told the Los Angeles Times. Bass was cautioned that the self-serving tweaks in with the report was...

Do you remember that high-speed rail project in California that was supposed to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco and be completed in 2020? Well, it's finally ready to begin laying track on a much shorter section on a ludicrously bigger budget. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) proudly announced that the high-speed rail has entered the track-laying phase. In his words, “We are now in the process of starting to lay track.” (Emphasis added). This is not for the full Los Angeles-San Francisco line that was supposed to be done six years ago, but for a 119-mile stretch from Madera County...

President Donald Trump’s Small Business Administration (SBA) is stopping the issuance of small business loans to foreign nationals, requiring that a business be 100 percent owned by a U.S. citizen or U.S. national to receive such a loan. This week, the SBA published a memo requiring that, beginning next month, applicants for the agency’s primary small business loan be American citizens or American nationals. “… effective March 1, 2026, SBA hereby revises Standard Operating Procedure 50 10 8 Lender and Development Company Loan Programs guidance related to businesses owned by non-U.S. citizens,” the memo states. […] Closing the small business...

A surprise new candidate has entered Georgia's 2026 governor's race, and he's bringing serious money with him. Here's everything Georgians should know. Who is Rick Jackson? Rick Jackson, 71, a Republican health care executive and billionaire founder of Jackson Healthcare, formally announced his candidacy for governor on Tuesday, Feb. 3, immediately shaking up the GOP primary field. Jackson Healthcare, based in Alpharetta, has grown into one of Georgia’s largest health care staffing firms. Jackson’s business profile and financial success have helped make him a well‑known figure in both the state's business community and Republican donor circles. According to the AJC,...

alifornians have a right to be angry about Minnesota. It’s getting all the federal government attention for its illegal immigration, street violence, fraud and graft when California, in fact, is the king of all those civic sins. Yes, Minnesota and its lead city, Minneapolis, are impressive in the scale of fraud, estimated currently at billions of dollars, according to the Cato Institute’s recent “Fraud Update.” Not bad for a blue state, especially one with just 5.8 million people. But let’s be honest. Minnesota’s inhabitants are mere pikers compared to those in the Golden State. There, the level of fraud and...

Outgoing Sen. Tina Smith (D‑MN), who has been serving since her 2018 appointment, threw her support behind Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D‑MN) to succeed her in the Senate, an early endorsement that bypasses Rep. Angie Craig, who enters the race with deep fundraising resources and several key endorsements. “I have never been more proud to serve Minnesota than in this moment,” Smith said in a video posted on X. “Today, 3,000 federal agents are terrorizing our communities. Two Minnesotans, Alex and Renee, have been killed at the hands of federal agents. Families have been ripped apart, and people have been...

Four Massachusetts residents are accused of using more than 100 stolen identities to get over $1 million in food stamps and pandemic-era unemployment benefits in a multi-state fraud scheme, federal prosecutors say. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said stolen identities from Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico were used to obtain $440,000 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The defendants also allegedly submitted fraudulent documents in order to receive more than $700,000 in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington and Nevada. --snip-- Three defendants charged...

A former Atlanta Housing Authority executive pleaded guilty Monday in a federal court to collecting more than $300,000 in federal housing and pandemic funds. Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln was in the courtroom as former senior vice president Tracy Jones pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft of government funds, wire fraud and credit application fraud. She could face more than 20 years in prison. Jones spoke softly, answering mostly yes-or-no questions. In the end, she told the judge she agreed with the facts laid out in a 16-page plea agreement and told the court she was guilty of...

n less than a month, two “ICE watchers” have been shot and killed by immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis. On January 24, a federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse. His death follows that of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who was killed on January 7. Both Pretti and Good participated in “ICE watching,” an anti-immigration-enforcement tactic that can involve tracking ICE agents, filming arrests, and alerting other activists of enforcement actions. While participants frame ICE watching as a “community safety” measure, these tactics often place untrained civilians in direct, high-stakes confrontation...

According to a report at the Texas Scorecard, Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, is going after the fraudsters abusing the H-1B visa system: Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a wide-sweeping investigation into alleged abuse of the federal H-1B visa program by Texas businesses, issuing civil investigative demands to three North Texas companies suspected of operating sham enterprises to fraudulently sponsor foreign workers. [snip] Standing outside a single-family home listed as the office address for one of the companies highlighted in recent reporting, Paxton credited BlazeTV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales with prompting the investigation. [snip] A portion of...

President Trump joined Dan Bongino on the first day back on his show on Rumble and dropped some big news… He said something BIG will be coming out very soon on Fulton County about the 2020 election. In other words: “we have it all”? ... There's a lot from 2020 that people forget, but I haven't. Remember when it was rumored that the White Hats raided that server farm in Frankfurt, Germany and the rumor was that Trump won with 410 Electoral Votes? I remember. I think we may see that data again. And a lot more. Have you noticed...

ST. PAUL, MN — Governor Tim Walz has emerged from the den of the Governor's Mansion to declare that there will be six more weeks of rioting and fraud. "We know this is all silly, but it's fun," said handler Marsha Billingsworth. "It's always rioting and fraud season, but the Governor-coming-out-of-the-den tradition is good family fun that brings in some tourism money, which will help offset the costs of all the rioting and fraud in the state." Once a year, Minnesotans cheerfully gather around the mansion to see what the governor will do, depending upon whether or not he sees...

🚨WATCH: 'What we found was deeply concerning' Scott Dexter, a former Minnesota Department of Human Services investigator, testified to Congress that he spent nearly three decades conducting criminal and financial fraud investigations, including in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program before political pressure and bureaucratic hurdles brought meaningful investigations to a halt. After joining DHS in 2013 as part of a newly formed fraud unit, Dexter said his team focused on data-driven cases. “Our cases were not selected based on the name of the center, the owner, or the community it served,” Dexter told lawmakers. “They were selected based solely...

The video covers federal charges against Detroit's 36th District Court Judge Andrea Bradley-Baskin (age 46), along with three others (including her father Avery Bradley, guardian Nancy Williams, and Dwight Rashad). They face allegations of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in a multi-year scheme. Key details from the case (as reported in the video and linked to U.S. Attorney’s Office announcements): The group allegedly embezzled funds from vulnerable, incapacitated individuals under guardianship/conservatorship in Michigan's probate system. Specific examples include using ~$70,000 from one ward's estate to buy an ownership stake in a local bar, and diverting money to...

China has executed four leading members of Myanmar-based scam syndicates, a Chinese court said on Monday (Feb 2), the second such announcement in less than a week as Beijing ramps up a crackdown on cross-border telecom fraud. Fraud compounds where scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Cambodia and the lawless borderlands of Myanmar. Initially, largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal billions of dollars from victims around the world.

Ilhan Omar’s reported wealth has skyrocketed, and questions are growing about her husband’s winery and business ventures. Things aren’t adding up. …

The fraud being exposed in California is INSANE - 18% of THE WHOLE COUNTRY’S home health care billing is coming out of Los Angeles County - One doctor billed the government $120 million in a single year claiming to oversee 1,900 patients - With almost 2,000 hospice agencies, Los Angeles County has more than 36 states combined and 30X MORE than the whole state of Florida and New York “How is that possible? And take a look at this map, a cluster of 287 hospice providers, in a two-mile radius, some in strip malls, unmarked buildings, even a wrecking yard...