JD Vance has announced that a federal anti-fraud task force is working to recover hundreds of billions of dollars linked to fraudulent small business loans, COVID-19 relief funds, and student aid programs.
Vance made the disclosure during a Tuesday meeting with state attorneys general, where he discussed the progress of the administration’s fraud task force.
According to him, the task force has uncovered billions of dollars in improperly obtained government benefits within just two months of operation.
“We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection,” Vance said. “We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California. We put a six-month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers because many of them were focused on fraud rather than providing services.”
He added that authorities had also recovered $135 billion allegedly stolen during the COVID-19 emergency relief period, along with identifying $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts now under investigation.
In a statement, the White House said the administration of Donald Trump and Vance is carrying out “an unrelenting, full-scale assault on fraudsters, scammers and corrupt operators who have looted billions from American taxpayers.”
The release outlined several enforcement actions and investigations, many of which focused on alleged fraud cases in Minnesota and California. No Republican-led states were specifically mentioned in the statement.
Among the task force’s actions, the administration said it halted nearly $260 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota over fraud allegations, suspended hundreds of hospice and home healthcare providers in California, launched nationwide audits of Medicaid Fraud Control Units, and blocked millions of dollars in suspected fraudulent student loan applications.
The Department of Justice also reported thousands of ongoing fraud investigations, including healthcare fraud schemes, pandemic-era loan fraud, and cases involving childcare centers and Medicaid programs.
