America’s Empire of Fraud

If you thought government waste was just sloppy bookkeeping, think again. The Justice Department has launched a National Fraud Detection Center to catch fraud against taxpayer-funded programs. Can it stop bad payments the moment they go out? That is still an open question. What is unquestionable is that the government is admitting its fraud problem is huge—and that insiders, not just outside crooks, take part.

Last week, Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald announced the National Fraud Detection Center as his latest move in a large-scale health-care fraud investigation. After the Justice Department charged 455 people across 45 states in health-care fraud schemes worth $6.5 billion, the government realized its fraud problem was so big that no individual agency could stop it. It would take a massive multi-agency push.

While McDonald’s efforts to crack down on grift are laudable, they will not succeed in bringing America’s empire of fraud to heel. Cronyism, deceit, grift and theft are symptoms of a spiritual disease that has infected not only Medicare and Medicaid programs.

This sickness has infected our whole society.

Independent journalist Nick Shirley and Medicare administrator Dr. Oz walked the streets of New York City in July, filming senior day-care centers in Queens. Oz said those centers billed Medicaid about $2.1 billion over three years. Shirley said he found evidence of more than $190 million in suspected fraud. That New York case was not part of the Justice Department’s big June bust. If Shirley’s figure holds up, it would be more money stolen from hardworking taxpayers—on top of the schemes already charged.

Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee says Minnesota officials had warnings about fraud in the state’s social service programs as early as 2019 and failed to stop it. That same slow response helped produce the Feeding Our Future scandal—a massive $250 million pandemic relief fraud scheme.

House Republicans found that California spent nearly $190 million on tablets for prison inmates, including death-row killers and child predators, some of whom allegedly used them to groom children online. Yet Governor Gavin Newsom’s office has spent more time making excuses than reforms.

In Ohio, the Small Business Administration suspended nearly 28,000 loan borrowers tied to $1.1 billion in suspected pandemic-era fraud. Nationally, $1.2 trillion went out the door in Paycheck Protection Program and covid disaster loans. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general estimated $200 billion of it—$1 out of every $6—was fraudulent. This is theft on a scale hard to even comprehend.

Even America’s public school system is corrupt. In Kentucky, lawmakers pulled six months of credit card records from Fayette County Public Schools. The average bill: $400,000 a month, spread across 115 cards, about half of them issued to central-office staff. The superintendent’s own travel reimbursements hit $60,000. One line item: $7,000 in airfare to Australia. Superintendent Demetrus Liggins said the trip was for himself and other staff “to examine best practices throughout the world to help students in emotional crisis.” I’m sure he had a nice trip. I doubt his students’ emotional well-being is any better.

When I look at that list of day-care centers, doctors and state officials who sat on fraud warnings for years, I don’t see a string of isolated scandals. I see an entitlement mentality. Remember doge, Elon Musk’s government-efficiency push that was going to root out waste? It lasted about 130 days before Musk was forced out by the deep state bureaucrats he meant to reign in. Colin McDonald’s National Fraud Detection Center isn’t likely to fair any better. The corruption is too deep for any one person to root out.

The prophet Isaiah described the cronyism, grift and theft in our sick society thousands of year ago. “Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them” (Isaiah 1:23).

Micah described the same rot: “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money …” (Micah 3:11).

Amos wrote, “For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right” (Amos 5:12).

All three of these prophets were describing a society with no integrity.

This is not the type of society that can be fixed by a new fraud detection center or anti-graft program because “the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth” (Habakkuk 1:4). Only national repentance can save America from destruction. Without such repentance, the few honest people left in the nation will need supernatural protection from the calamities to come.

A day is soon coming when God will not pass by America’s sins anymore (Amos 7:8).