WASHINGTON — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday revealed that the Department of Justice is currently probing thousands of cases of fraudsters bilking taxpayer-funded federal programs — with more than $1 trillion potentially vulnerable per year.
In his first press conference since being elevated to the role of acting AG, Blanche touted recent prosecutions that had resulted in guilty pleas — including a half-billion dollars “in health care and COVID fraud” — as the DOJ is handling more than 8,000 fraud cases.
A South Florida insurance brokerage firm pleaded guilty to an Affordable Care Act enrollment scheme totaling more than $160 million, and a California man pleaded guilty to submitting $270 million in fraudulent claims through California’s Medicaid program for costly prescription drugs, among others.
But those investigations “represent a fraction of the fraud ripping off our country every day,” Blanche noted, “with over a trillion dollars at stake every single year threatened by increasingly sophisticated and opportunistic fraudsters.”
The acting attorney general announced that DOJ had established a National Fraud Enforcement Division for the purpose of handling the thousands of other cases — and that prosecutors would work closely with Vice President JD Vance’s task force coordinating an interagency response.
“Because of this administration’s leadership, fraudsters, scammers, tax cheats or anyone who lies to get rich off the generosity of the American people should be on notice,” Blanche said.
Unless he is confirmed, he will serve in the role for the next 210 days after President Trump removed Pam Bondi from the attorney general position last Thursday.
Before her firing, the president had criticized Bondi’s failure to bring prosecutions against some of his political foes such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey — but Blanche denied that as the reason for his predecessor’s ouster.
“Pam Bondi is a trusted friend of President Trump’s and will remain so,” he told reporters at the news conference Tuesday. “Nobody has any idea why the attorney general is no longer the attorney general and I’m the acting attorney general — except for President Trump.”
But Bondi’s handling of the DOJ’s responses related to its investigation and prosecution of the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein also stoked tensions with the White House, according to sources.
The Trump administration through various agencies has been investigating fraud of taxpayer-funded programs in Democratic-controlled states — with Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz yanking $259.5 million in federal funds from Minnesota in February.
Others like California and New York have been put on notice, through the fraud task force as well as GOP-led congressional investigations.
“A lot of the anti-fraud protections that existed in our government for a very long time were actually turned off by the Biden administration,” Vance said at the first meeting of the White House fraud task force late last month.
“This is not just theft of the American people’s money. This is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely on,” added Vance, who is co-chair of the task force.
“The autism scam that we’ve seen in Somalian parts of Minnesota really illustrates well what’s been going on across whole layers of our government.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz bowed out of his re-election campaign as the pressure from the Trump administration notched up in January.
“Every minute that I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who want to prey on our differences,” the Democratic governor said.
“We cannot effectively deliver programs and services if we can’t earn the public’s trust,” he added. “We’ll win the fight against the fraudsters, but the political gamesmanship we’re seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder.”