I have spent thirty years in rooms where real money changes hands — structuring private credit deals, managing family office portfolios, and testifying as an expert witness on fiduciary duty in federal and state courts. One lesson sticks: when government programs expand without strong guardrails, opportunists treat taxpayer dollars like an open bar at a wedding they didn’t pay for. On March 16, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, an interagency body charged with coordinating a government-wide strategy to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in federal benefit programs. It works alongside the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division — announced January 8, 2026, led by confirmed Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald — centralizing criminal and civil fraud enforcement across healthcare, tax, and federal benefits. Think of it as DOGE at street level, targeting the waste that honest citizens fund through their taxes.
Americans are generous. In 2024, we gave $592.5 billion to charity, with individuals contributing $392.45 billion — a per-capita rate that ranks among the highest of any large, developed nation. We don’t object to helping neighbors in need. We object to watching those contributions vanish into luxury cars, overseas properties, and lifestyles that would make Gordon Gekko pause. Rooting out fraud isn’t heartless; it’s the prerequisite for compassion that actually reaches people who need it.
The scale demands urgency. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, based on fiscal years 2018 through 2022. That’s not a rounding error — that’s a recurring category-5 fiscal hurricane. In fiscal year 2025, GAO reported $186 billion in improper payments across federal programs. Those dollars could shore up Social Security or reduce the national debt. Instead, they routinely finance schemes that mock the program's stated purpose, because oversight was designed to be optional.
Consider Feeding Our Future in Minnesota. What started as a federally funded child nutrition program became the largest COVID-19 fraud case in American history. Aimee Bock, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, recruited people to open more than 250 fake sites that billed the government for meals never served and falsely reported feeding 91 million children. On May 21, 2026, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel sentenced Bock to 500 months and ordered her to repay $242 million. The judge described Bock as "at the epicenter" of a "vortex of fraud." The scheme totaled upward of $250 million, with more than 70 indictments and 66 convictions. Federal prosecutors announced 15 additional charges the same day. Only a fraction of the stolen funds has been recovered.
This wasn’t genius crime. It was ordinary opportunism meeting weak oversight. Pandemic waivers allowed for-profit entities to participate with minimal verification. Sponsors monitored their own sites. State education officials ignored repeated red flags — implausible meal counts, missing financial controls, unanswered complaints. The Minnesota Legislative Auditor documented every gap: limited authority, understaffed oversight, trust substituted for verification. Bureaucracy produced rules on paper while cash drained out in every direction.
Minnesota is not an outlier; it’s a template. In California, prosecutors found that more than 20,000 state prison inmates collected $140 million in fraudulent COVID unemployment payments — a 2020 snapshot that barely scratches the surface of California’s pandemic fraud losses, later estimated at up to $31 billion. Scott Peterson, sitting on death row for murdering his pregnant wife, had a claim in his name. The state EDD failed to cross-check applicants against prison rosters, a basic control that any compliance officer in private finance would have in place on day one. Medicare loses an estimated $54 to $60 billion annually to fraud, errors, and abuse; Medicaid lost $31 billion in fiscal year 2024 alone. These aren’t aberrations; they’re the predictable output of programs built with good intentions and run with the discipline of a DMV line on a Monday morning.
The administration is hitting back. Vice President J.D. Vance chairs the interagency Task Force, coordinating with state attorneys general and Cabinet agencies. The DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division is building data analytics tools to flag unusual patterns before losses mount. In fiscal year 2025, False Claims Act enforcement netted a record $6.8 billion, more than $5.7 billion tied to healthcare fraud alone. That’s conservative government accountability in practice: smaller, smarter, and answerable to the people funding it.
Some will call this heartless and aimed, they claim, at vulnerable communities. That misses the point. The Feeding Our Future conspirators didn’t rob a faceless bureaucracy. They redirected resources meant for hungry children to Porsches, luxury handbags, and overseas real estate. Thomas Sowell said it plainly in "A Conflict of Visions": “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” The trade-off here is clear — either you verify, or you subsidize fraud. Genuine compassion demands the former.
Practical steps can build on this start. The Task Force needs dedicated, multi-year appropriations for analytics and inter-agency coordination — not a one-year budget gesture that evaporates before audit findings land. Real-time eligibility checks, biometric verification where practical, and AI-driven outlier flags reviewed by humans before payment clears should become standard in any program touching federal benefits. State attorneys general need to run parallel operations and share intelligence without bureaucratic friction. A congressional stock-trading ban and genuine term limits would reduce the incentive to shield profitable grift from oversight that actually stings. My rugby players figured that out long ago: you win by executing fundamentals, not by hoping the other team collapses on its own.
We remain a nation of doers. The prosperity we built came from work, accountability, and the steady conviction that integrity matters. The national debt crossed $39 trillion on May 18, 2026 — growing at $5 billion a day — and every dollar lost to fraud pushes that number higher, faster. The Fraud Task Force is the necessary correction. Support its work. Demand measurable results published publicly so taxpayers can hold Congress accountable. Real compassion protects the system so it serves those who truly cannot help themselves, without turning the rest of us into easy marks.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.