At first, it didn’t sound right. Someone must have miscalculated. How could there be so much fraud that has robbed taxpayers of billions of dollars without anyone seeming to notice? Worse, it appears they didn’t seem to care.
Vice President JD Vance convened a meeting on Tuesday of his Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. Fifteen Republican attorneys general showed up. Almost two dozen Democrat attorneys general didn’t come, citing short notice. Their invitations went out on Friday, so they probably had a good excuse. Vance urged all of them to help in rooting out more fraud than has so far been discovered. So many administrations have talked about fraud, but seemingly have done little about it, until now.
According to Vance, taxpayers across the country were defrauded of billions of dollars by unscrupulous scammers. Vance said the number will likely be higher as investigations continue. One optimistic note. Vance said $160 billion has been “clawed back,” which doesn’t always happen in such cases.
Vance said more than $22 billion has been recovered from small business loans and transferred to the Treasury Department. He said more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements has been recovered. As previously disclosed, these included fake hospice care facilities, many of which were in Los Angeles and other California cities. Vance also said: “We’ve recovered taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the floodgates were opened in the immediate aftermath of COVID.”
Vance also announced $6.3 billion has been recovered from fraudulent government contracts which “were mostly rewarded during the (Biden) administration.” And finally, he said the task force has blocked $60 million in student aid fraud.