Free Republic

“Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel.” — Hyman Roth, “The Godfather Part II“ ====================================================================================== The mobsters in “The Godfather” set their sights way too low. If they really wanted to make it big time, they should have targeted federal entitlement programs instead of gamblers and drug addicts. Not only does it pay better, but you can count on one political party to look the other way. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) figures that fraudsters make off with more than $500 billion of federal taxpayer money a year, plus another $184 billion in “improper payments.” That isn’t just bigger than U.S....

A serial squatter was sentenced to 20 years for fraud after she’d been evicted nearly three dozen times and racked up thousands in property damage under multiple aliases in Texas and Colorado for decades. Heather Ruybal was slapped with the maximum sentence in Dallas on Aug. 31, after she was found guilty July 27 of felony fraud for using a false name and writing a bad check to lease a house in 2023, Denver7 reported. “This is what she did for a living. Moved into individuals’ homes knowing that she wasn’t going to pay her rent, then exploit the eviction...

Thousands of Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students. With A.I., the work has dried up, a warning for online gig work that has been a global lifeline. Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments. Mr. Bundi didn’t know it then, but he was in the boom era of internet gig...

People in Texas see 7-11 store owners in line at Wal-Mart buying inventory with SNAP. It goes right into the gas station. But it's "racist" to say anything about this. You have to pretend that Americans are being beaten in the free market. Intolerable.

A crooked California doctor who ripped off Medicare for more than $45 million to bankroll luxury vacations, expensive cars, and a jaw-dropping $12,000 antique crossbow is finally facing serious prison time. Violetta Mailyan, 45, of Glendale, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars after a jury found her guilty of running an enormous fraud operation through her Healthy Way Medical Center clinic, submitting fraudulent claims for Botox treatments that were medically unnecessary, purely cosmetic or never performed at all. The staggering scam wasn’t just about bogus paperwork. Mailyan billed taxpayers for treatments supposedly administered while her clinic was shuttered —...

WASHINGTON — In a loss for President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court on Monday swiftly rejected the administration’s request that California separate out up to 20,000 mail-in ballots that officials allege could be submitted by noncitizens. The court in a brief order turned away without explanation an emergency request filed just hours earlier by the Trump administration as part of an unusual last-minute flurry of election litigation. Lower courts had also ruled against the Trump administration. The court acted so quickly it did not even ask California for its views first, as it normally does in such cases. California officials...

There are nearly 2,500 registrants listed as at least 110 years old on Michigan’s voter rolls, a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) complaint from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) alleges. The complaint, filed late last month, accuses Michigan officials of keeping 2,461 registrants on the state’s voter rolls despite their birth years being listed as at least 110 years old — 47 of which have birth years in the 1800s. One such registrant’s birth year is listed as 1823, 14 years before Michigan became a state. PILF lawyers said they warned about the registrant in 2019, but the registrant...

Two staffers at a Central Coast charter school have been arrested after allegedly embezzling nearly $300,000 from school funds. The International School of Monterey in Seaside were alerted to the illegal activity after Terry Bumper, the school’s former food services director, placed a suspiciously large Costco order for eggs, bacon, and potatoes. A school administrator flagged the exorbitant shopping spree, which led Seaside Police to uncover that Bumper, 42, had embezzled $58,800 from the school by ordering products he used in his personal catering business, Flava 2 You, which he launched in 2023. Bumper is also accused of renting out...

The Justice Department unveiled charges against five people accused of orchestrating a sophisticated campaign to rip off federal financial aid by enrolling “ghost students” who existed only on paper — seizing about $750,000 in ill-gotten funds. The network operated in the US and Kenya, where a phony safari company banked the loot after applying to and then enrolling phony students in college, using stolen identification. The Kenyan scheme is believed to have netted about $2 million. Three of the five defendants — Mabed Utate-Alberto, Patricia Perez and George Mendez — were charged in New Jersey for acting as “money mules”...

In September, a letter apparently showed up in a mailbox in Gum Spring in Goochland County, addressed to “Biscuit Rigsby.” It was from the Secretary of the Commonwealth, who informed Biscuit of good news: “Governor Abigail D. Spanberger has restored your right to vote, to become a notary public, to serve on a jury and to hold public office.” Enclosed was the formal document, signed by the governor, which three times listed Biscuit’s name in bold type. This is the type of letter that goes out to convicted felons who, under Virginia’s constitution, lose certain rights that can only be...

It must be good to be a black, Muslim woman, the first such to get elected to Congress and, not incidentally, a Democrat and an avowed hater of the United States and of Israel. If you can check all those boxes, then you can commit the most overt and obvious frauds and scams, and the mainstream media will act in lockstep to cover up, suppress and minimize your wrongdoing. But at some point the brazenness can become too much even for the New York Times. That appears to have happened in the past couple of days in the case of...

U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Timothy Courchaine's office is investigating reports about "three non-profit organizations registering non-citizens to vote in Arizona" and has already referred the matter to the FBI, he said Friday night. He also sent letters Oct. 26 to Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes regarding Stand Indivisible Arizona, Worker Power and When We Count, citing "written and video reports" that "personnel acting on behalf" of the three groups "either intentionally disregarded or were recklessly ignorant of" Arizona law barring registration of non-citizens in elections. Courchaine asked them to review...

“Can’t we just be Mexico or Paraguay and have peace and quiet while things mostly go to hell?” — Matt Taibbi A pro-Peltola political action committee (49th State PAC) paid $87,000 to an Ohio consulting company run by one Jerid Kurtz (operating under the name “Zane”) to compile a list of all the Dan Sullivans in Alaska and recruit one to run for Dan S. Sullivan’s Senate seat. They succeeded, finding Dan J., age 69, a retired US Forest Service employee and schoolteacher, in Petersburg, AK, who had never run for anything before. In late May 2026, he filed as...

A Southside Virginia lawmaker is demanding an investigation after a constituent received an official rights-restoration certificate for his dog, Biscuit, a beagle-hound mix from Goochland County that died about five years ago. The discovery follows the "Betty No Last Name" controversy in Chesapeake — where a purported convict lacking a surname had "her" rights restored — and raises fresh questions about the governor's vetting process just days before voters decide whether to make felons' voting-rights restoration automatic via an Election Day ballot measure supported by Richmond Democrats. Del. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham — who received the letter from the constituent who...

A video of a Minnesota official telling Somali residents they can show up to vote in Tuesday’s election without being registered has prompted concerns about election integrity in the North Star State. “If you’re already registered to vote, you don’t need to bring anything with you,” Minnesota Voter Outreach Director Melanie Hazelip can be seen saying on Somali TV.

Eight people have been indicted for conspiring to steal more than $7 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) between April 2023 and September 2025. The alleged fraud impacted thousands of victims, many of whom never received reimbursement for the stolen benefits. Belal Hauter, 34, allegedly led the conspiracy by opening or directing coconspirators to open numerous merchant processing accounts in the names of various delis, bodegas, or grocery stores, including a deli where multiple defendants worked. The co-conspirators also opened numerous bank accounts to connect to those processing accounts, so EBT transactions went directly to accounts under their...

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.

A little-known agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ended a myriad legal giveaways to 2.2 million migrants welcomed by President Joe Biden. The withdrawal of the legal giveaways allows the department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to overcome the army of elite-funded pro-migration lawyers who are trying to minimize deportations. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency is “reversing the downstream effects of the Biden border crisis,” the department stated on October 29. The statement added: “These actions are in addition to the millions of visa revocations and denials issued by the U.S. Department of State...

Until now, the public had to rely on lies told by the mainstream media to understand why the windows were covered at the TCF Center in Detroit on the day after the November 2020 election. After more than 100 volunteers carefully reviewed nearly one million documents from Detroit’s November 2020 election—documents obtained through a FOIA lawsuit filed by New Jersey citizen Yehuda Miller—we are now prepared to announce one of our investigation’s most significant findings. Democrat poll challenger David Burcar covered the windows at the TCF Center to keep GOP poll challengers from watching the process. Jocelyn Benson appears to...

With the midterms days away, federal officials are arresting and charging noncitizens accused of illegally registering and voting. DHS says it’s checking about 300,000 more cases against state voter rolls. That puts noncitizen voting at the center of the election-integrity debate going into Election Day.