Free Republic

NEW: RFK Jr. says Medicare spending on wound care patches exploded from $200 million in 2019 to $14 billion last year: "It's all stolen." Bad actors billed Medicare billions by slapping the most expensive skin grafts on elderly and dying patients who didn't need them. "The doctors who prescribed them would get 6% of the sales cost. And so, they were incentivized to prescribe more expensive products. In Europe, they spend 35 cents a cubic inch. We were spending $135, and that went up to $2,000 a cubic inch." "So 2019, we were paying $200 million. Last year we spent...

In a 6-3 ruling, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database can be used by states to identify non-citizens on their voter rolls. The unsigned majority opinion said "the claims made by the voters who challenged the use of SAVE lack merit. All of the claimants have IDs that can be used to get ballots they can cast. Using SAVE is an option that states may use if they wish to exclude non-citizens from their voter rolls. Their is no statutory mandate for prohibiting use of this option." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed,...

The State Department has revoked more than 250,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office, as the administration continues to crack down on unlawful immigration and increase vetting of who is allowed to visit the United States. The revocations were for a variety of violations, including visa holders who violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against the U.S. or Americans, defrauded Americans, abused the immigration system, and endangered national security, a State Department official told Fox News Digital. Among the visas revoked were 2,300 in connection with birth tourism, the practice of pregnant foreign nationals...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced charges Wednesday against 10 foreign nationals accused of illegally registering to vote and then casting ballots in Minnesota. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that illegal aliens from Brazil, Ghana and Liberia falsely claimed US citizenship to vote in the 2022 midterm elections, the 2024 elections and some primary elections earlier this year. “Voter fraud erodes the public’s trust in our electoral system, and it’s vital to our democratic process that we do everything that we can to restore that trust,” Blanche said. “The most basic way the Department of Justice can accomplish this...

A Colombian nonprofit that provided aid services to Venezuelan migrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, those with HIV, and others, has been debarred after an investigation revealed the organization’s former president and affiliates allegedly sexually exploited those it was purporting to help. Debarment is a form of penalty used by the agency to suspend funding and involvement with USAID for a period of time. The debarred nonprofit, FUVADIS, was founded by Luis Meneses, who stands accused of engaging in sexual quid-pro-quos with program participants in exchange for benefits, the United States Agency for International Development, Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG) said in...

A Florida man pleaded guilty for his role in a COVID-era healthcare fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced Thursday. Hasan “Lucas” Seyhun, 45, of Miami, Florida, admitted guilt Wednesday to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud for his part in documenting more than $500 million in fake claims to government-backed health programs, according to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) news release. Seyhun previously served as the chief operating officer of New York-based Fast Lab Technologies (Fast Lab), which provided “no cost” COVID-19 tests during the pandemic that customers could purchase online via the company’s...

Another citizen journalist exposes people defrauding the US taxpayer. This time it's the Jewish Hasidic community.

Minnesota Lt. Gov. and Democratic Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan is set to attend a fundraiser hosted by an individual who has served as the state’s Medicaid medical director during a time period where Medicaid fraud exploded onto the national scene. Dr. Nathan Chomilo has served as Minnesota’s Medicaid medical director since January 2020 and is listed as one of the hosts of an October 1 fundraiser supporting Flanagan, first reported by Townhall’s Dustin Grage. Much of Minnesota’s broader fraud scandal has centered on Medicaid-funded programs, including autism services and Housing Stabilization Services, and although Chomilo was not the official responsible...

A medical watchdog group is asking the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate Planned Parenthood’s medical coding practices, which they say could point to fraud. Do No Harm says Planned Parenthood affiliates may have used improper billing codes when prescribing cross-sex hormones to gender-confused young people, according to a new investigation. “Planned Parenthood affiliates may be deliberately miscoding services to mask their true purpose and to facilitate the improper reimbursement of cross-sex hormone treatments,” Do No Harm wrote in a letter to HHS Inspector General Thomas Bell that was exclusively reviewed by The Daily Wire. The watchdog group...

Gaza terrorists joked about the October 2023 invasion of Israel as the attack was taking place, according to contemporaneous phone calls released in a US federal investigation on Tuesday that gave an inside view of terrorists’ immediate reaction to the Hamas attack and their preparations to join the invasion. The call logs were released in the case against Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub al-Muhtadi, who allegedly assembled a team of armed terrorists and crossed into Israel to join the attack, and later lied on his visa application to enter the US. He was arrested in Louisiana last year. Al-Muhtadi was allegedly a...

You can take the Somali out of Somalia, but can you take the Somalia out of the Somali? Such eternal questions leap forefront to mind after the umpteenth investigation into suspected fraud and taxpayer abuse raises disturbing issues. This time, the story comes via the Post Millennial’s Katie Daviscourt, and we’re no longer talking about Minnesota, but Seattle. Some Seattle-area home daycares are facing questions over millions of dollars in taxpayer funding after an investigation found apparently empty facilities, uncooperative operators and one neighbor who flat-out called a nearby daycare a "scam." And when a reporter started asking questions at...

(The Center Square) - Medicare Part D sponsors made $587.7 million in ineligible payments to pharmacies for five drugs carrying obsolete prescription-only labeling more than a year after the corresponding brand-name drugs switched to over-the-counter status, a federal watchdog found. The money won't be recovered, because the payments complied with Medicare guidance in place at the time, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General, which made the finding in an audit covering calendar years 2021 through 2023. Medicare Part D, the federal prescription drug benefit, is delivered through private "sponsors," including Medicare Advantage...

Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News. "I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they've been looking the other way when this is happening, and we're catching it all over the country," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday night in an interview...

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance will make an announcement on Obamacare fraud Tuesday morning at the White House, The Post has learned — after launching crackdowns that restricted funding for other federal healthcare programs. Vance has focused heavily on alleged theft of taxpayer money in multibillion-dollar medical programs in his role as Trump’s fraud czar — generally coupling allegations with action to block the distribution of funds deemed at-risk for misappropriation. The announcement comes as the Trump administration turns up the heat on President Barack Obama’s namesake health insurance overhaul, with President Trump vowing earlier this month to “stop...

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced Sept. 16 that his agency had identified approximately $75 million laundered through homeless services, mostly in California. States and cities receiving federal taxpayer dollars to support homeless people funneled that money into nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, where the taxpayer dollars were spent on lavish vacations, private jets, luxury automobiles, opening nightclubs, and other personal ventures, according to the announcement. The “homeless industrial complex,” as Turner called it, involves nonprofits and non-governmental organizations that take federal taxpayer dollars, administered by states, and register non-existent identities as “homeless people” receiving aid, when no...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Administration (FNA) announced a sweeping crackdown on fraudulent SNAP retailers—bodegas, convenience stores, and grocery stores—across New York’s five boroughs. This investigation, dubbed Operation SNAP Back, included hundreds of undercover investigations leading to action against 170 retailers. “This is just the latest action in the Trump Administration's fight against fraud. The message is clear, if you accept any portion of an annual $100 billion taxpayer program, you must follow the rules or face the consequences,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. “We owe it to every American...

This is big. Through this executive order President Trump is defining fraud, corruption and abuse within the H1B visa system as a “national security threat.” That designation gives DHS and State Dept officials an elevated power-set to immediately introduce corrective action.

Federal authorities arrested an illegal migrant Friday for repeatedly lying about her citizenship to land a job at an aerospace manufacturer and US military contractor where she worked for three decades. Mexican national Alma Patricia Contreras Villafana, 54, of South Los Angeles, was taken into custody by Homeland Security officers after a standoff at the Torrance factory operated by Howmet Aerospace, where she worked as a machinist. ... Court papers say Contreras Villafana first secured employment at a Howmet subsidiary in 1996 by attesting on her Form I-9 that she was a US citizen. In fact, she had been ordered...

NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida woman who was paid $750,000 by a fund for people sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein has pleaded guilty to falsifying records she used in her application for the money. Jennifer Percival, a scholar who has written books on autism, entered the plea in federal court in New York on Monday, the same day that she was charged in the case. A transcript of the proceeding was entered in the court record Wednesday. During her brief court appearance, Percival didn’t speak about Epstein and prosecutors didn’t say whether they had reached a conclusion about whether...

ATLANTA — A member of the Georgia House of Representatives is facing federal charges after prosecutors accused him of fraudulently collecting thousands of dollars in COVID-19 unemployment benefits while continuing to work and earn income. Federal prosecutors announced that Dexter L. Sharper, 54, of Valdosta, was charged with making false statements to obtain unemployment assistance funds administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. According to the criminal information, Sharper allegedly applied for pandemic unemployment benefits between April 2020 and May 2021 while serving as the state representative for House District 177, which includes portions of Lowndes County. Prosecutors say Sharper...