‘You Have to Come Down Hard’
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz issued the challenge to Alex Marlow Showsaying the Trump administration will aggressively target fraudsters in Minnesota and beyond.
Widespread fraud and misuse of billions of taxpayer dollars recently discovered in Minnesota — much of it committed by hordes of Somali refugees descending on the state in recent decades — has prompted the Trump administration to take on fraudsters and state officials who authorize and even facilitate the illegal use of funds.
In an apparent act of damage control, left-leaning Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) announced the appointment of a director for a statewide fraud prevention program, who will be called the “director of program integrity.”
“According to U.S. Department of Justice figures, there was about $822 million in fraud in Minnesota services,” Fox 9 reported, “including $300 million from Feeding Our Future, the possibility of nearly $220 million in fraud under the Autism Program and $302 million from the Housing Stabilization Program.”
Oz was among the first and most adamant to say that fraud in the programs he oversees would not be tolerated, recently warning Walz of the potential loss of Medicaid funding unless he corrected the alleged fraud.
“If we are not satisfied with the state’s projects or cooperation, we will stop paying the federal portion of these programs,” Oz says. wrote. “The message to Walz is clear: Either you fix this problem in 60 days, or you start looking for change under your couch, because we’re done footing the bill for your incompetence.”
The famous doctor, television personality and now high-level government administrator told Marlow how the fraud was allowed to escalate — and how he plans to target and eliminate it in Minnesota and elsewhere.
“We can defund some of these programs that were subject to waivers, created, again, initially to do things that you all would sort of be commended for,” Oz said. “You know, a person is homeless, find them a place to stay for a little while when they leave the hospital, help transport people who don’t have the opportunity to get to a clinic visit so they can get that care, and a whole host of other opportunities, including, by the way, advanced ways to help kids with autism, are on the spectrum, coping with life by providing services to take them to parks, etc. All of this seems Well, right? But if you use this as a weapon by allowing unscrupulous people to gain access to the kitty, they will take you for a ride.
Half of the $18 billion in federal welfare funds, which have supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018, were lost to fraud, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said at a news conference Thursday, pointing the finger at autism and housing services. People come from all over the world to steal millions of dollars from Medicaid, housing and other U.S. government programs, he added.
Oz elaborated on the remarkable fraud in the autism program alone, which he says is budgeted at just $3 million a year, but is being defrauded many times that amount:
They spent $400 million on this program. For what? Because [fraudsters] caused parents of non-autistic children to lie and pretend their children were autistic. Then they had other parents train their children or themselves in this 40-hour night flying course to become a so-called expert at it, and they would take the children and babysit them. It’s a big scam. And then we find out that the perpetrators of all this are buying real estate, luxury cars, properties in Nigeria or Somalia, where many of them are from, perhaps to finance terrorist organizations, as you mentioned.
As investigators continue to target alleged funding of terrorist organizations from defrauded taxpayer dollars, Oz said fraud in the housing program, which he shut down, is indisputable, proclaiming, “It’s just not going to happen again.”
But these aren’t the only programs prone to widespread fraud that has proliferated in Minnesota.
“There are 14 of these different projects that [Minnesota] “We got permission to do advanced, progressive work,” he explained. “It doesn’t seem like they’re able to properly monitor the financial implications of these plans, so they’re being taken for a ride, and no one seems to have been monitoring the cash register. These accusations started several years ago on some of the earlier programs created during covid to feed children. When these people found out no one was watching, they started adopting the same tactic, rinsing it and repeating it over and over again to defraud us in other areas.
The fraud in Minnesota should teach a “bigger lesson” to government officials who are too often slow to act, Oz said.
“When you discover a fraud – and fraudsters are good at discovering it – they milk it for as long as they can,” he said. “So you have to go down hard.”
The Alex Marlow ShowHosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast at YouTube, Scold, Apple PodcastsAnd Spotify.
Bradley Jaye is deputy political editor of Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
