WASHINGTON—Vice President JD Vance said on Tuesday during the latest Task Force to Eliminate Fraud roundtable that the federal government will work with state attorneys general to combat fraud.
Vance hosted representatives from 15 attorneys general offices from around the country in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
“One of the things we’ve realized in combating fraud is that the resources of the federal government, while vast, can be supplemented and aided by a lot of the people who know best what’s happening in their states, which is the attorneys general represented here today,” he said.
“They have a lot of legal resources, they have a lot of prosecutorial resources, and of course, they have the desire to prevent fraud as much as we do, and so I appreciate these leaders for being here, because we’re going to work together, state and federal government, to try to combat fraud,” he added.
The partnership between the federal government and states is bipartisan, the vice president said.
“I’m particularly gratified here that this is not a partisan effort. I believe we have a couple of representatives from the attorney generals in Connecticut and Oregon, and as I’ve said repeatedly… this should not be a partisan effort,” he said.
“Everybody should care about fraud. Everybody should care about rooting out fraud. Everybody should care about saving the American taxpayers’ money, and importantly, everybody should care about actually protecting the programs that only work and are only properly funded…if the money funding those programs isn’t being stolen by fraudsters,” he continued.
He also touted some of the task force’s successes since its inception in mid-March, including unveiling billions in fraud:
We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection. 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 so many of the newer hospice providers were not actually providing hospice services, but were just focused on fraud. So, we’re going to cut that out for a little bit and try to get to a place where we can actually certify that the people providing hospice services are actually providing those very necessary and important services. We’ve recovered taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the floodgates were opened in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts, which were mostly awarded during the last administration, and that has stopped. And finally, we blocked $60 million in student aid fraud that should have gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead we’re going to fraudsters.
Assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s National Fraud Enforcement Division (NFED), Colin McDonald, also highlighted various wins at the Department of Justice since the NFED was stood up in early April. He emphasized to the attorneys general present that the federal government is prepared to partner with them.
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