The federal government loses up to $521 billion a year to fraud, according to a first-of-its-kind estimate from a Congressional watchdog.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which serves as the research arm of Congress, estimated annual fraud losses cost taxpayers between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, according to a new report published Tuesday. The fraud estimate’s range represents 3% to 7% of average federal obligations.
Read More
At least four elections in the U.S. have been overturned by courts this year after voting irregularities and fraud were discovered, prompting new balloting in most of those races.
In 2020 and 2022 general elections, numerous lawsuits were brought challenging results amid alleged irregularities. This year, a few lawsuits have been decided on 2023 elections and on a 2022 election, which resulted in the initial results being overturned.
Read More
Pfizer and Moderna’s lack of transparency regarding DNA contamination in its COVID-19 shots “meets the criteria for evidence of fraud,” according to the doctor who invented the mRNA vaccine technology upon which the products are based.
“They [Pfizer and Moderna] absolutely did know about the existence of SV40 sequences,” vaccinologist Dr. Robert Malone told Republican lawmakers during a livestream House hearing Monday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) led the event to examine injuries and deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccinations.
Read More
Former President Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution’s rules regarding elections after the release of information about the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.
“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump wrote on TRUTH Social.
Read More
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the Federal Trade Commission have taken legal action to shut down what they say was a fraudulent scheme perpetrated by a company targeting minority-owned small businesses.
They filed a joint complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida where Judge Marcia Morales Howard issued a temporary restraining order against the company, preventing it from doing any more business.
Read More
Two Florida business owners were indicted on charges related to a fraud scheme that allowed them to collect more than $12 million.
Matthew Pardi and Ashley Lynn Hars allegedly created a series of fake moving companies, often stealing the identity of real businesses. Additionally, they would inflate their record with fake 5-star reviews and dubious claims.
Read More
What irony!
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger must be turning over in their graves.
Bernie Sanders must be having sleepless nights.
The left-wing anthem “Which Side Are You On?” is no longer about whether you’re a “union man” or a “thug for J.H. Blair.” It’s about the size of your stock portfolio or when to go public with your start-up.
Read More
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty Monday on four counts: three of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The jury remained deadlocked on three charges and found her not guilty on four other felony charges.
The former entrepreneur reportedly remained emotionless as the verdicts were read, The Associated Press stated. Her partner, Billy Evans, reacted similarly.
Read More
This week’s Golden Horseshoe goes to the Small Business Administration for millions in Paycheck Protection Program loans it issued to fraudsters who used the money to purchase luxury homes, high-priced jewelry and expensive cars, including a Bentley and two Lamborghinis, according to a watchdog report.
The Paycheck Protection Program had the highest percentage of cases of criminal activity of all the pandemic relief programs, according to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee’s recent Semiannual Report to Congress.
“A total of 14 OIGs have indictments/complaints, arrests, and/or convictions from April 1, 2021, through September 30, 2021, related to the federal government’s COVID-19 pandemic response,” PRAC reported.
Read More
Two corporate executive parents whose children attend prestigious universities were found guilty in federal court Friday for bribing university staff to rig the admissions process, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Gamal Abdelaziz, former chief operations officer of Wynn Resorts Development and John Wilson, a private-equity financier and former chief financial officer of Staples, who were tried together in federal court, each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to falsify their childrens’ academic and athletic records to gain admission to the University of Southern California (USC), Stanford and Harvard as athletic recruits with the help of scandal ringleader and admissions consultant Rick Singer.
The two men were found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery involving a school that receives federal funds, the WSJ reported. The jury also found Wilson guilty of aiding and abetting in fraud and bribery and filing a false tax return.
Read More
The feds faced another setback in their quest to keep $85 million in assets seized in a raid without charging hundreds of safe deposit box renters with a crime.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner issued a preliminary injunction July 16 in a lawsuit by several customers of Los Angeles-based U.S. Private Vaults (USPV), who alleged the FBI denied them due process by providing civil forfeiture notices that lacked “any legal basis” for seizing the contents of each box.
Read More
Maryland officials say they suspect over 508,000 new, potentially fraudulent unemployment claims have been filed since May.
The announcement Monday followed the state saying it has verified over 1.3 million fraudulent claims since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic.
The most common means of filing a fraudulent claim is identity theft, according to CNN.
Read More
Republican lawmakers in Michigan released a report Wednesday concluding there was no widespread fraud in the state’s November election, debunking many speculations, but they pointedly warned that the mailing of unsolicited absentee ballot applications creates “a clear vulnerability for fraud that may be undetected.”
“The serious, potential outcomes of these vulnerabilities versus the minor effort to request an application make a strong and compelling necessity to not provide such applications without a request from a voter – as was standard practice until this past year,” the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee concluded. “Therefore, the committee recommends the Michigan secretary of state discontinue the practice of mailing out unsolicited applications.”
The committee also recommended that the state strengthen voter ID requirements, not weaken them like Democrats in Congress have proposed, as the practice of absentee or not-in-person voting grows.
Read More
This week’s Golden Horseshoe award goes to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the nation’s pension bailout agency that is still reeling from revelations its chief of contracting engaged in a bribery scheme that steered $4.8 million in fraudulent business to a vendor in return for more than $1 million in personal benefits.
The bribery scheme involving the now convicted director of PBGC’s Procurement Department was possible because the agency suffered from several vulnerabilities, including reduced competition among vendors, missing legal reviews and sole-source contracts that evaded bidding designed to get taxpayers the best bargain, the PBGC’s inspector general reported.
“His actions were enabled by internal control weaknesses; specifically, inadequate oversight of PD procurements and a lack of a control mechanism to ensure that PD sent all requisite contract actions for legal review,” the inspector general reported. “Although PBGC began requiring that more contract actions receive legal review after the PD Director resigned in February 2020, it does not have a mechanism to ensure PD complies with this requirement.”
Read More
For as long as politicians have been passing legislation, there have been measurable consequences to that legislation – both intentional and unintentional. Usually, the final impact is not known for years after a law is passed. We could write a book predicting problems with the proposed federal bill, H.R.1, the so-called For the People Act, but the state of Connecticut has given American taxpayers a timely preview of the burdens and waste we can expect from just one of the bill’s many government mandates. Specifically, the requirement that states must mail out ballot applications to all registered voters will unnecessarily spend, and ultimately waste, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
The 2020 elections in Connecticut provide a cautionary preview of this proposed requirement in H.R. 1 to send absentee ballot applications (ABR) to every registered voter. Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise W. Merrill (pictured) did exactly that, spending $7.1 million in federal taxpayer money sending out unsolicited ABRs for the primary and general elections. A total of 3.6 million applications were mailed, yet only 865,000 were converted to actual votes. That’s a cost of $8.20 per ballot returned – by any measure, a poor yield on that investment.
The sad irony about this waste of taxpayers’ money is that the applications were available to voters free of charge either at town halls or on the State of Connecticut website. One had only to pick up the form in person or download and print it in the comfort of his own home. Other states have similarly convenient options for obtaining ABRs and provide for ballot applications to be requested online, by email or by phone. Citizens in these states take responsibility for their right to vote, and the states facilitate their doing so, rather than mandate it.
Read More
A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida Thursday won an appeal of her 2017 conviction for corruption, according to several reports.
Former Democrat Rep. Corrine Brown, who represented Florida’s Fifth and Third Congressional Districts over a period of nearly 25 years, had her conviction overturned after the 11 Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the District Court wrongly dismissed a juror after learning that the “Holy Spirit” told him Brown was not guilty of the crimes.
Read More
Just a few short weeks apart, the U.S. Justice Department settled two major fund-raising cases involving foreign money injected into American elections.
In February, a longtime Democratic bundler named Imaad Zuberi, who also donated to Donald Trump’s inauguration, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and millions in fines in a criminal information that alleged he routed foreign money into U.S elections, sometimes through straw donors.
Last week, Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, 75, a large donor to the Clinton Foundation, got a fine, no prison and deferred prosecution for allegedly routing his foreign money to straw donors to help Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and some GOP congressional candidates. An associate also made a secret loan to Obama-era Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who failed to disclose the assistance.
Read More