Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Ghosts on the Payroll & Families Paid to ‘Hang Out’ in Ohio's Fraud Factory

Transcript

Ghosts on the Payroll & Families Paid to ‘Hang Out’ in Ohio's Fraud Factory · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fraud is something we are seeing that is now being
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: exposed at levels that none of us could have actually imagined,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: even after what we'd already found in Minnesota. Now, there's
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of people that thought, well, this is just
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: fraud that's going to happen in extreme places where there's
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: hardcore liberals. We're now saying that is not true. I'm
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: going to take you to Ohio and I'm going to
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: tell you about this story. I'm going to ask you
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: at the very beginning share this story on social media,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: all right, because people need to know that what we're
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: witnessing now with fraud is not.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Just in the liberal States.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Democrats have figured out how to steal and these immigrants
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and illegal immigrants in every state in America.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Now, let me see the stage for you.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Just before the Department of Government Efficiency closed its doors,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it made a quiet move keyword, quiet move that may
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: end up its most lasting impact on the federal deficit.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: DOGE published a massive trove of data in February that
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: for the first time, let's the public see what companies
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: are billing medicaid for now. For decades, all right, the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: payouts have been shrouded in secrecy, and now we understand
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: why one of the largest government programs in essence was
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a black box that the government made that way so
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that there could be kickbacks, waste, fraud, and abuse that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: we would never see. Now, this interesting article that's been
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: put out by a man, Luke Roziak. He's spent the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: last two months digging into the numbers, and what he
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: found was the most blatant waste of federal dollars he
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: says he's ever encountered in his two decades as an
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: investigative journalist. Now this has become part of a Medicaid
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: millionaire's Daily Wire series and it's brilliant. I would tell
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: you to go look at it. It's now exposing billions
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: of dollars in dubious personal services payment where people are
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: paid to spend time with their own families.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Again, this is not a joke.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So he set his sights on Ohio, which, like Minnesota,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: have been granted waivers to expand Medicaid well beyond its
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: original purpose. Now, under the guise of Healthcare, Ohio pays
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries homes to perform what
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: they describe as homemaking and chores like cooking, and cleaning.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Now here's what's interesting. The people performing these services, these
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: quote personal services the tests don't even have to be
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: healthcare workers, and in many cases are actually relatives of
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the actual Medicaid patient. Now, according to the Daily Wire
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: data analysis, Ohio spent a billion dollars alone on home
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: healthcare in twenty twenty four. That's the last year that
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: we've got data, and we expect the number to go
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: hire in twenty twenty five. Now, since these services are
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: performed inside private residences, okay, there is no way to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: know whether workers win it all or what they're actually
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: doing in exchange for the billion dollars of your tax dollars.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: There's also an infinite number of small black boxes inside
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a black box, and this is the second warning. There
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: are multiple signs that the service provided and build the
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: government with sometimes just companionship and quote conversation like that's
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: an actual line. So we're paying people to hang out
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: with family members. I wish I was joking. I'm not,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: as people have realized now, and these frontsters are just
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: doing this now, not like recently.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: This has been going on for years. We just looked
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the other way.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: What they realized The United States government will basically pay
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: you to do anything as long as there's paperwork around it.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: They will literally pay you to hang out with your
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: own family members. Let me give you another example of this.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Just in northeast Columbus. They have seen its economy replaced
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: by businesses that build medicaid and Columbus, Ohio is a
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: city with the second largest You're ready Somali population in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the country. Where's number one Minneapolis, Saint Paul. It has become,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: on the surface, the most quote unhealthy city on planet Earth.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Quote Well, if the government is going to pay you
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: to do it, one home healthcare operator told the reporter.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: People see it as lucrative, so they just jump on it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And when no one's stopping it, why wouldn't you do it? Now,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: these new welfare queens aren't the recipients who'se low income
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: qualify them, by the way, for poverty programs. They're the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: companies that are getting rich off of those living in poverty.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: There are even massive billboards up in Columbus. One of
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the billboards shows a looks like a daughter and a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: mother on their porch holding hands, and this is what
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the billboard says, Caring for a loved one at home
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: question Mark, get paid, get support. Then it says for
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: you to go to careforth dot com. So you're driving
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: down in Cleveland less than forty seconds. You can come
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: across endless home healthcare companies. You have Capital home Health,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you have Continental home Health, you have Dynamite home Health,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: You've got the Ohio Senior health Care Home Healthcare that
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you have entire buildings throughout the city that are filled
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: entirely with what appeared to be identical businesses. These enormous
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: complexes that have now been put out and exposed and pictured.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: One of them is on Bush Boulevard. It lacks windows,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and that would be a problem for most office building,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: but there's almost no one in that office building. What
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: is inside, however, is ninety four different companies signed up
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to build Medicaid, each with a tiny off office, often
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming some generic company
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: name ending at Home Health LLC, and sometimes another piece
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of paper claiming the employees had just stepped out for
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a break but they never come back.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Now the building alone build.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Taxpayers sixty six million in the span of a few years,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the records now show, and if you pick the owner
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: of the Columbus home healthcare company at random and look
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: them up in the public records. You're likely going to
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: go down an endless rabbit hole. Years of unpaid taxes
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: as well as debts. Okay, you're going to find that immediately,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: sometimes even criminal records, and an astonishing number of LLCs
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: created in other industries, as if the millions they take
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: from Medicaid are just a side gig. They actually went
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: to several of these rabbit holes and they started to
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: expose things. Let me give you an example of what
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: they found. Number one, a politician who funded an eleven
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: million home healthcare company that he appeared to run part
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: time without even mentioning it in his political biography, who
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: funded his campaign with massive donations from other home healthcare owners.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: That's the politician. Okay.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: You also had a woman who reinvented her janitorial LLC
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: as a health provider, not a joke, and then build
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: medicaid nearly one hundred thousand dollars the first month, and
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: she got the cash. You had a landlord who, by
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the way, bought airplanes after running space to hundreds of
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: home healthcare companies that build Medicaid a quarter of a
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. Yeah, that's really happening, your tax dollars. You
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: had a million dollar medicaid business that was owned by
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: a couple who repeated fraud, violence, and had theft convictions repeated,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and that to the government sending your tax dollurs too.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: You had another man who went to prison for medicaid
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: fraud but told them government he was too broke to
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: pay restitution, while his neighbors and associates presided over a
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: poverty program empire that made him rich. You also had
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: an accountant who lost his license for stealing public funds,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: then open a seven million dollar home healthcare company using
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the address of a convicted money launderer's teenage son.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: This is not a joke.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: These are the people that are doing this and they're
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: getting rich with your tax dollars. Now, these are not
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: business geniuses, Okay, there are people with any training or
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: specialty in the field of health. They often failed int
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: a variety of other businesses before suddenly becoming millionaires all
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: over again in the home health care field by billing
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the government for countless dollars. Sometimes the report says the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: company will have a quote full roster of clients in
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: its very first month, making many normal, sane people wonder like,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: where were these clients they come from? How do you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: get to max capacity in one month. The companies don't
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: have websites either or appear to advertise at all. They
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: just randomly fill up and maximize billing to the government.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: They can't stand out for their thousands of rivals based
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: on price unless they pay kickbacks, because the government pays
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the same to everyone. So that becomes the second part
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: of the scheme. You sign up a bunch of people
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: really really fast, you get them a little kickback, and bam,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: you make millions of dollars. What's also interesting about what's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: having Columbus is nearly every owner of the home healthcare
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: companies in Columbus appear to be foreign. They live in
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: a parallel society where every associate in the public records
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: also has a foreign name, and all their business transactions
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: are conducted with other foreigners. When asked one that home
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: healthcare companies did, one man threatened journalists, who cares do
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: you guys pay my bills? I'm going to tell everybody
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: you guys are racis, was the response from that home
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: healthcare company. Now the government, by the way, is not
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: unlikely has no ability to monitor all the people, and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the it writes millions of dollars of checks to in Columbus.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Apparently that's so they're just saying, we just keeps in
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the checks. They all, by the way, share combinations of
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: just a few names, like Ahmed Muhammad and Muhammed Ahmed.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Documents reviewed by The Daily Wire show individuals will spell
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: their names multiple different ways within a single document, and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: many of them lift their birthdays as January one because
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: their birth dates are unknown, so they just put down
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: January one, and then we send them millions of your
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: tax dollars. The business model is simple from what we've
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: now seen from these documents. I'll give you a perfect example.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: They had a forty year old Somali migrant who gets
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: paid for spending time with and maybe cooking for his
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: own sixty five year old mother. The middleman is one
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: of thousands of home health firms have the NPI numbers
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: necessary to then build medicaid. The forty year old becomes
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: an employee of that company, but has no client other
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: than his mother. There is no way to verify whether
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: he actually even provides his services to his mom, unless
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: his own mother is willing to testify against him. I
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: think we all know that's not going to happen. This
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: poverty program is different from things like food stamps because
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: it has no monetary cap.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Let me say that again. It has no monetary cap, and.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Its extent is decided not by the politicians but by
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: any doctor who's willing to sign a form saying you
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: could use some help around the house. It only takes
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: one doctor who will say yes to churn out enough
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: forms to bankrupt an entire state. Now, for years, there's
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: been quote efforts to rein in the waste that have
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: nibbled around the edges, shaving off a million here, a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: million there. But skeptics and liberals argue that the car
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: us cutting exercise was pointless because they said the lion's
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: share of federal spending was locked up in nondiscretionary spending
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: like healthcare. The implication was that there's no waste in
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: that category and nothing that could be done about it.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Even as the nation was well, this program was going
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: towards insolvency and then didn't care because they were getting
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: paid and then the kickbacks were coming to the politicians.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: This was a blatant waste, and it happened within miles
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of the Ohio State Capitol the governor there. And again
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: this goes back to what I was saying about Republicans.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: The governor in Ohio is Mike Dwain. His appointees run
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the state. In an age of artificial intelligence, the medicaid
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: system has seemed disinterested in even the most obvious red flags.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Perhaps that's because it's largely run by the states. What
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: would have for more of the billing being forced for
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: U you to pay as a federal tax payer. Now
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: here's the good news. The Trump administration is now turning
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: its sites to medicaid fraud with a task force. It's
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: being led by the Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and the Vice President Jeddy Vance, and they want to
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: start with Vance's home state because what we're seeing is
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: this is happening, as I mentioned earlier, in a conservative state,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: not a liberal state. And that's the most important part
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: of this entire story. Vice President JEDDI Vance has just
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: dropped a statistic that should stop every one of us,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: as a taxpayer, dead in our tracks. According to the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Trump administration, now roughly one hundred and eighty six thousand
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: people have been listed as deceased. They're dead, but they
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: were still receiving government benefits, costing you millions and millions
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: of dollars. That is nearly two hundred thousand goes recipients
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: in the system, people who are legally dead, but somehow
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: they had checks that kept going out that were being cashed,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: meaning that somebody is taking advantage of a dead person's
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: benefits and it's costing you, as a taxpayer, the money.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And if that doesn't, by the way, perfectly sum up
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: the dysfunction in DC, I don't know what does. Because
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: two hundred thousand people getting benefits also goes back to
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the political issue at the voting booth every year. We
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: have talked about dead people voting before on this show.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: If you can get benefits from the federal government for
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: years on end while you're dead, why would I not
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: think that you can get someone to vote on your
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: behalf while you're dead as well. Now this isn't just
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: about numbers on spreadsheet, and I'm going to get back
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to the voting issue in a moment, but this is
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: about how a federal government ha has become so corrupt
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: or bloated or both, and so outdated and so poorly
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: managed that billions of taxpayer dollars are disappearing through fraud, waste,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and abuse as well as incompetence. While you and I,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: as hardworking Americans, we are the ones that are being punished.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: We know what the issue is with affordability right now.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: We know where groceries are. We know what's happened with
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: rent in this country. We know what's happened with gas prices.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: We know what's happened with health insurance costs. Even though
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: we've got a bombacre, the American people are told every
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: single day that there's no money to secure the border.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: There's no mindy to fix those security there's no money
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to strength the medicare. There's no money to reduce the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: national debt. There's no money to help our men and
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: women in uniform and our veterans. Right but somehow there's
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: always money that's flowing to dead people and into these
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: fraudulent government programs, duplicate payments. We also found out we're
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: going out to multiple dead people, fake identities have been
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: set up. That's something else that they're now raising the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: alarm on and the government system that apparently can't even
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: determine whether someone is alive or dead. We're supposed to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: trust on election day to only have people that are
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: alive actually voting.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Now jd.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Vance is doing the right thing right now, shining a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: spotlight on this. There is some paperwork errors that were
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: deliberate and done on purpose. That is where the larger
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: pattern is happening in this country. All over the country,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: we have a fraud crisis. Washington elites have ignored it
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: on purpose for years because it's worked to their advantage.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And many of the people that are committing this fraud
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: are actually giving political donations back to the people that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: look the other way, and that would be the Democratic Party. Now,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the federal government loses staggering amounts of money every year.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: We're now being told to improper payments. Now we're not
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: talking about a few million dollars, which by the way,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: should make you angry as a taxpayer. We're talking about
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: numbers so large that most Americans can't even conceptionalize the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: amount of cash we're talking about here. Estimates now from
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the Inspector General's Office and the oversight agencies are now
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: showing hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments across
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: federal agencies over the last couple of years. I'm going
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to say the number again, and this is where it's
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: hard for you and I'd understand it.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Hundreds of billions of dollars.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: This includes, the document says, fraudulent unemployment claims, fake COVID
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: release applications, medicate abuse at numbers you can't even understand,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Medicare abuse, and scams again at a level you can't
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: even understand. So security over payments, massive food stand fraud,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: especially in the Smalley community, and of illegal immigrants. Identity
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: theft schemes where you're stealing the identity of dead people
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and then getting money, organized criminal networks exploiting wheak government systems,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: they also say, is becoming extremely expensive, and this is
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the part that should really make all of us mad.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: What these documents also not just show, but they prove,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: is that Washington knew these systems were vulnerable. They knew
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: that they were broken, and they knew that people were
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: taking advantage of it, and they didn't care to stop it.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: During the pandemic for COVID, for example, criminals including international
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: fraud rings. The documents say exploited relief programs at levels
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: never seen before.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: In many states, inmates even.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Filed people in jail, filed for unemployment overseas, Scammers stole identities,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: organized gangs they now say, targe to COVID aid programs
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: because the safeguards were so weak or even nonexistent. Taxpayer money,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: they say, was flowing out the door as fast as
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: bureaucrats could approve the applications. And now we're learning that
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: in some cases, dead individuals are still in twenty twenty
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: six receiving benefits that were set up then. Now the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: big question that we should ask is this, how in
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the hell does this happen? And the most technologically advanced
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: nation on earth, yes, that would be us. How does
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a government the tracks Americans through the IRS, tracks every
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: financial transaction imaginable, tracks employment records, tracks banking data, hell
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: tracks travel data, tracks tax filings and immigration records, somehow
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: failed to identify dead beneficiaries. It's one answer. They didn't
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: want to track the dead beneficiaries. They knew that fraud
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: was happening. And the answer is real simple. Bureaucracy was
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: on display without any accountability because the people that help
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: set this up new the kickbacks would keep coming. Now,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the federal government has become so large that no one
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: seems responsible when something like this goes wrong. Agencies immediately
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: point the finger and pass blame somewhere else. Contractors blame
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the outdated systems. Politicians promise reforms during election years and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: then move on and do nothing until the next headline hits,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And then all of this is happening. And guess what,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: you and I are paying the bill. Now, let me
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: tell you something else that Americans are also sick of.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: And that's the double standard here, because if you owe
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the irs money, they'll find you fast. You miss a
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: tax payment, you'll get letters, penalties, audits, interest charges. But
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: when the government loses billions of fraud, everyone try says, well,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: these are just things that happen and we'll figure it
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: out eventually.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: No, this is not something that just happens.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: This is set up at scale, and this is just
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why public trust in our government
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: has collapsed. Americans are seeing these stories and they're concluding
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: that the system is deliberately, I think now fundamentally broken
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: on purpose. Because let's be honest, if Washington want to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: fix as they could but Washington right now apparently can't
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: even stop payments to people who are dead. So how
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: can Americans trust them to run massive entitlement programs? How
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: can we trust them to run healthcare systems, immigration systems,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: a trillion dollars spending package, for example. And fraud, by
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the way, is a problem that is not victimless. It
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: is affecting every American taxpayer, whether you're a Republican, a Democrat,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: or an independent. The fraud problem is the real issue.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Is it set up to work this way on purpose? Well,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: based on what we're seeing now, the answer is yes.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Now it's taken from all of us, right, It's taken
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: from the truck driver paying fuel taxes. It's taken from
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the waitress that was working overtime. Thank goodness, the president
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: has no extra tax on overtime. Now, it's taken from
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: small business owners paying their taxes who are, by the way,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: struggling to make payroll. It's taken from seniors who actually
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: depend on these programs to be there for them. Instead,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: their money is being taken and given to other Now
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: we're also having to borrow money to pay for the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: interest on the money we're borrowing because we are running
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: trillion dollar deficits. Fraud not only drains the resources from
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: all of us, but then we're not even helping the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: people were designed to help with the program at the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: very beginning of its stated mission. Now, the scale of abuse,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the White House says, goes far beyond the deceased recipients.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Just look at Medicare fraud alone. We've now learned that
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: criminal enterprises have used fake clinics, fraudulent billing schemes, phantom patience,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and identity theft operations to steal billions and billions from
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the taxpayers. In some cases, organized crime groups set up
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: entire fake medical networks simply to build the government for
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: services that were never rendered. Then there's welfare fraud, countless
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: examples of people gaming the system and the assistance programs
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: through false income reporting, fake dependence meaning kids that you
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: don't even have, duplicate identities, fraudulent eligibility claims, and some
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: states have repeatedly admitted their verification systems are not only outdated,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: but they've declared their own systems are quote ineffective to
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: stop fraud.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: So why on earth would you keep doing the system
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: that way?
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: And then all of us well, we're being told we
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: got to pay more or taxes. Washington's answer to mismanagement,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: it seems to always be the same, spend more money,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: more money for agencies, more money for oversight, more money
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: for consultants, more money for programs. But they're not actually
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: fixing the problem. And the final question that all of
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: you should be asking, and the one I'm asking right now,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: is this. When was the last time someone got fired
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: over these failures? When was the last time someone went
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to prison over this type of fraud? When was the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: last time a political leader was held responsible? Well, no
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: one is. And that's why jd. Vance is doing what
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: he's doing right now and what the White House is
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: doing right now. There is enormous amounts of money that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: is being wasted by our government while ordinary citizens are
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: demanded by our government to work harder, pay more, and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: shut up and don't ask any questions.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: That's not fair.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: By the way, every improper for payment is intentional fraud. Some,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: by the way, are set up and done in a
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: way that is egregious, all because the government refuses to
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: have databases.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: That actually work for us.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: So you look at this now, and what we see
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: is a president of the United States of America, empowering
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the vice president to go out there and aggressively address
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: fraud because cleaning it up requires real reforms. It requires
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: modernizing systems, It requires cross checking databases. It requires enforcing
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: work enforcement where appropriate. It requires verifying citizenship, yeah and.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Eligibility to work.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: It also requires stronger audits and then stronger prosecutions. It
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: requires admitting that government expansion without oversight creates opportunities for
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: massive abuse of fraud. So as you look at what
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the President's trying to do, it's clear the President the
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: vice presidents say, we're tired of hearing elite lecture us
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: saying every time we show them fraud, it's oh, somehow misinformation.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Because back to the beginning of the story, you have
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty six thousand deceased individuals, almost two
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand that are receiving benefits from the government right now.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: That's not a minor accounting issue. That's billions and billions
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of dollars in deliberate fraud, and the American people they're
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: being forced to pay for this fraud. So what's gonna
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: happen next, I don't know, But what I do know
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: is this We need to be encouraging this White House
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: to not back down, to allow Jdvans to do his job,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and to make sure that this fraud finally stops before
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: it bankrupts this country all together.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Well, keep following this story.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I can promise you that we've got a lot more
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that's going to happen the days ahead.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: So make sure you don't forget.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Grab our podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcasts wherever you get
• 26:57
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• 27:01
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