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Fraudsters abused Biden’s lax policies to steal billions, financial watchdog claims
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As pervasive fraud schemes continue to sweep across the U.S., a group that seeks to preserve economic freedoms at the state level says that former President Joe Biden’s policies were a main driver for the proliferation of the issue.
OJ Oleka, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, said «relaxed controls» during the last administration opened the door to widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars. And state treasurers are now leading the fight to strengthen oversight and reclaim funds for the American people.
«This isn’t a partisan statement, but it is a true statement to say that this kind of exploded during the Biden administration,» Oleka told Fox News Digital. «A lot of the controls were turned off. A lot of states who have the philosophy that ‘more government is good’ just simply turned on the spigots and allowed anybody to get access to any benefit.»
Speaking from SFOF’s annual conference in Clearwater, Florida, Oleka said fraud has become so deeply embedded in government programs that it’s now «a feature in the system, not a bug.»
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Former President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd during a fundraising event with the South Carolina Democratic Party at the Columbia Museum of Art on Feb. 27, 2026 in Columbia, S.C. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
SFOF’s first-ever Oversight Report for 2025 found that affiliated state financial officers protected and returned $28 billion to taxpayers last year, uncovering $5.7 billion in waste, fraud and abuse. They, meanwhile, generated or returned another $22.3 billion through investment earnings and unclaimed property programs.
«We say that fraud actually has an industry in this country,» Oleka said. «What we’re trying to do is root out the fraud industrial complex that exists within our government programs. That’s the biggest challenge.»
He pointed to weak eligibility requirements during Biden’s time in office — and sometimes no requirements at all — exploding the instances of fraud.
«Then practically anybody can have access to the benefits — people who don’t need them, people who don’t deserve them, people who aren’t even eligible for them,» he lamented.
President Donald Trump this year tapped Vice President JD Vance to lead a nationwide «War on Fraud.» It stemmed from the highly scrutinized Minnesota «Feeding Our Future» scheme, which allegedly defrauded the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Oleka praised the Trump administration’s anti-fraud efforts, and in a February letter to the White House told Vance that SFOF members are «allies already on the battlefield» ready to help protect taxpayer dollars.
«The beauty of what’s happening now is you’ve got the Vice President and the task force and our state financial officers rooting to get this stuff out,» he said. «That’s the goal: you get it out root and branch, you stop it from being in the system, and you make a benefit system that actually works again for the American people.»
But, he said, future administrations need to continue the crack-down if Americans want to see lasting change.
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Democratic Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a news conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 6, 2026. (Alex Kormann/Star Tribune)
The SFOF is also working directly with members of Congress, including House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and state officials to ensure fraud is addressed beyond the Trump administration, according to Oleka.
He also would like to see some of the changes cemented through executive order.
«You’ve got a system that is allowing you to do the things that you’re doing, but it’s clearly unethical, it’s clearly wrong, and you saw a lot of this actually take off during the Biden-era,» Oleka said.
Massive fraud was recently exposed in California, Maine and Ohio, where he said Democratic leaders failed to act because they «don’t have the political will to stop the fraud.»
A multi-million dollar hospice fraud scheme in California was uncovered, while a Maine health services company was accused by a whistleblower of misusing millions in Medicaid funds in December. In Columbus, Ohio, hundreds of home health companies that shared the same addresses and operated out of vacant or poorly maintained properties were found to have billed the federal government more than $250 million in Medicaid spending.
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(OJ Oleka for Fox News Digital)
«We’ve seen it in Minnesota, we’ve seen it in California, Maine and Ohio, all across the country,» Oleka said. «But what you also see are state financial officers who are standing up for the American people. What you also see is Chairman Comer standing up for the American people. You also see the Vice President and the task force and the President of the United States standing up for the American people.»
He insisted that taxpayers should not be on the hook to foot the bill for fraud.
«The American people do not benefit when there is a system that’s giving out their money to people who don’t deserve it and who don’t need it,» he said.
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Oleka argued that the push to end fraud goes hand-in-hand with lowering costs for Americans.
«Our folks not only talked about fraud, but also about how they can help lead the fight to make things more affordable for the American people,» he said. «As a result, the tone of the conference was hopeful.»
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for comment.
administration, corruption crime, congress, minnesota fraud exposed, state, politics, donald trump, jd vance
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Exposed Fauci diary shows he estimated COVID-19 death rate to be much lower than what he told Congress
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Entries from early 2020 in a now-exposed personal diary kept by Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic show that he privately estimated the death rate from the illness was significantly lower than what he told Congress under oath only weeks later.
Fauci, 85, has come under intense scrutiny for years regarding his approach leading the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, and his alleged links to the Chinese lab where the virus originated. He will return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to speak about his newly publicized personal records.
«The stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and three,» Fauci said in testimony before the House Oversight Committee on March 11, 2020, according to a transcript of the hearing.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci prepares to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on November 4, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Senators questioned Fauci and other witnesses about the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children between 5 and 11 years old this week. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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During the hearing just weeks into the virus reaching the U.S., he was asked by Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, to compare the mortality from COVID-19 to the mortality of the seasonal flu.
«I think if you count all the cases of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic infection, that probably brings the mortality rate down to somewhere around one percent, which means it is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu,» Fauci continued. «I think that is something that people can get their arms around and understand.»
But on Feb. 8, 2020, about a month before that congressional testimony, Fauci expressed privately that he believed the virus’s mortality rate was much lower than what he later told lawmakers.
«[Former CDC Director] Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak,» Fauci wrote. «He and I are on the same page in thinking tht [sic] this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 (above) making the case fatality rate (CFR) more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.»
Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 2024. The hearing covers findings from a 15-month Republican-led probe into Fauci and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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At that time, Fauci had counted 34,687 cases of the virus and 724 fatalities, according to his diary, which equals just over 0.2%.
Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the pandemic, and first became the face of combatting COVID-19 at the onset of the pandemic during President Donald Trump’s first term, and remained in the role under President Joe Biden until retiring in 2022.
The very influential position wasn’t lost on Fauci. His diary entries tracked his rising influence and press appearances, and he meticulously kept track of how he was portrayed.
«Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,» he wrote in a diary entry on May 21, 2020.
«It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson in the world,» he continued.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the game between the New York Yankees and Washington Nationals at Nationals Park on July 23, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
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Fauci noted that he was developing a «very unique and interesting relationship» with Trump.
His diary is adorned with screenshots of headlines that mentioned him, including a New York Times story from March 2020 titled, «Not His First Pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci Sticks to the Facts.»
He referenced another Washington Post article in his diary on Aug. 8, 2020, titled, «As Fauci battles the pandemic and politics, his grateful neighbors celebrate him as a hero.»
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is sworn-in before testifying before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at the Rayburn House Office Building on June 3, 2024, in Washington, D.C. The Subcommittee is holding a hearing on the findings from a 15-month Republican-led probe of former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci and the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital reached out to Georgetown University and the Georgetown University Department of Public Health, where Fauci serves as a distinguished professor at the university’s school of medicine, seeking comment on the journal entries versus public statements.
Fox News Digital also reached out to Paul’s office but did not hear back by time of publication.
anthony fauci, health, politics, white house, fox news media, coronavirus
INTERNACIONAL
Uruguay puso en marcha los patrullajes con blindados militares en los barrios de mayor criminalidad de Uruguay
Vehículos militares comenzaron a patrullar los barrios con mayores niveles de criminalidad en Uruguay. El primer día de tarea el equipo tuvo un problema: quedó fuera de servicio por ajustes técnicos tras su primera recorrida. Este domingo, el vehículo Cóndor ya había vuelto a patrullar el barrio Marconi de Montevideo.
El viernes, el Ministerio del Interior había presentado uno de los vehículos blindados tipo Cóndor que serán incorporados a los operativos de seguridad pública y al patrullajes de zonas definidas como de “mayor complejidad” por las autoridades.
El ministro Carlos Negro explicó que viernes que la incorporación de estos blindados fortalece “la protección de la ciudadanía” y la “seguridad de los funcionarios policiales”, según la información divulgada por Presidencia de la República. “Lo que queremos es, por un lado, la protección de los vecinos con mayores recursos materiales y, por otro, la protección de los funcionarios policiales que llegan a las zonas más complejas”, expresó el jerarca.
Esta unidad fue decida por el Ministerio de Defensa Nacional y es parte de un total de cuatro vehículos que se desplegarán progresivamente en la capital uruguaya.
El peso del vehículo es de 9.000 kilos, según informó el director general de Operaciones Especiales, Jorge González. Está pensado para que sea utilizado en tareas de patrullaje preventivo, en el traslado seguro de efectivos y en la respuesta a situaciones de enfrentamientos armados
“La idea es proteger a los ciudadanos, concurrir a lugares de enfrentamientos armados y tener una protección adecuada para nuestros propios policías”, señaló González.
El Cóndor fue equipado con cámaras y una tecnología adicional que mejora la visibilidad en el entorno y facilita la conducción durante los operativos, según la comunicación oficial. Los choferes debieron completaron una capacitación específica de tres semanas en el Batallón de Florida, a unos 100 kilómetros de la capital uruguaya.
Los capacitados fueron un total de 19 efectivos.
El primer vehículo ya está operativo, pero hubo un problema en su primer día.
Según informó Montevideo Portal, el primer blindado sufrió varias fallas mecánicas y quedó fuera de servicio en menos de 24 horas de haber comenzado a utilizarse. Una de las fallas fue la rotura de una manguera. Esto motivó algunos cuestionamientos de parte de la oposición.
“Así gobiernan. Son un libreto de murga no divertido. Cantinflas no lo haría nunca mejor. País roto”, escribió el senador Sebastián Da Silva, integrante del opositor Partido Nacional. “Cerrá y vamos”, criticó el presidente de esa fuerza política, Álvaro Delgado.
Tras esta controversia política, el Ministerio del Interior informó que el vehículo Cóndor “se encuentra plenamente operativo y realizando tareas de patrullaje en la zona oeste de Montevideo”.
Está previsto que los otros tres blindados sean incorporados de forma paulatina, a medida que finalicen los trabajos de mantenimiento. “Esperamos que en el correr de agosto estén prontos los otros tres vehículos”, declaró el ministro.
El despliegue diario o para operativos específicos será definido por la Policía Nacional, según las necesidades que haya.
El presidente de la República, Yamandú Orsi, había anunciado el 22 de junio la nueva medida de seguridad. “A partir de un encuentro con los ministros de Defensa, Interior y Economía resolvimos redoblar el combate contra el crimen organizado. Para esto direccionamos la infraestructura de seguridad del país a este fin”, expresó.
Después, el ministro descartó que esta medida signifique una militarización de las calles de Montevideo y el área metropolitana. “Si hay algo que teníamos previsto era despejar cualquier duda que se pudiera generar con ese tipo de términos. Solamente se trata de contar con infraestructura que posibilite en una coyuntura específica y una circunstancia especial que el Ministerio del Interior tenga los vehículos apropiados para patrullar, con sus funcionarios”, dijo el secretario de Estado.
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