A coalition of conservative state financial officers who report they have already uncovered and stopped billions in taxpayer waste is pledging to join with Vice President JD Vance to root out fraud nationwide.
During Tuesday’s State of the Union address President Donald Trump put the vice president in charge of leading the federal government’s “war on fraud.”
The State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) weighed in soon after.
As Fox News reported Friday:
In a Thursday letter to the White House, the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) praised President Donald Trump’s focus on what he called fraud scandals that have “resulted in tens of billions of dollars being stolen from American taxpayers,” writing that such corruption “shreds the fabric of a nation.”
SFOF CEO OJ Oleka told Vance that the group’s 40 conservative state treasurers, auditors and comptrollers across 28 states stand ready to support the administration’s anti-fraud mission, noting they collectively oversee more than $3 trillion in state funds.
The SFOF’s latest “Oversight Report” accompanied the letter. It claimed the affiliated financial officers “safeguarded” more than $28 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse in 2025, according to the cable news outlet.
Some of the most alarming examples included Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia finding almost $2 billion in excessive local government spending, and in Kentucky where $1 billion in waste included more than $836 million in improper Medicaid payments discovered by Auditor Allison Ball.
The Trump administration has zeroed in on Medicaid and other federal social funding following the fraud scandal that has unfolded in Minnesota this year which the president has claimed could be as high as $19 billion.
Vice President Vance said Wednesday the administration is stopping some funding to that state to force reform.
“We have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money,” Vance said Wednesday at a press event attended by Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
“A lot of people are getting rich off the generosity of American taxpayers,” Vance also said. “But more fundamentally, and more importantly than that, it means that there are kids in Minnesota who deserve these services, who need these services, and they’re not going to those kids. They’re going to fraudsters in Minneapolis.”
The SFOF 2025 report also featured millions of dollars saved in Utah, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Carolina from misused, fraudulent, and questionable costs.
In his letter, the SFOR’s report Oleka stated, “Our cohort of 40 officers from 28 states oversees more than $3 trillion in state funds, upholding their fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of every taxpayer.”
The organization argues that state-level auditors, typically elected independently and not subject to the control of governors and legislatures, are best able expose mismanagement and enforce fiscal discipline.
In his letter to Vance, Oleka wrote, “By working together, we can protect our nation’s treasure to the fullest extent against every foe and every plot to endanger it.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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