Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice has initiated over 8,000 fraud cases related to stolen taxpayer dollars, and there’s more to come.
“The Department of Justice is holding criminals accountable for stealing over half a billion dollars from taxpayers, and across our U.S. Attorney’s offices all over this country, we currently have over 8,000 fraud matters underway,” he said Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, as you’ve heard a lot about recently, because it’s true, these cases represent a fraction of the fraud ripping off our country every day.”
Blanche credited President Donald Trump with leading the charge against such criminal acts and cited the newly created “Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” led by Vice President J.D. Vance.
“Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, this department, working closely with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, is supercharging efforts to take down every fraudster and bring them to justice,” he continued.
Blanche added, “For example, just this week — and it’s only Tuesday — a criminal defendant was sentenced, and the department obtained two additional guilty pleas in matters totaling over half a billion dollars in health care and COVID fraud.”
“If you think about that, just since yesterday, we had a guilty plea in a $160 million health care enrollment fraud scheme, and a sentencing in a $100 million COVID-19 fraud, and a guilty plea in a $160 million health care fraud scheme as well,” he explained.
.@DAGToddBlanche: “We currently have over 8,000 fraud matters underway… These cases represent a fraction of the fraud ripping off our country… This Department — working closely with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud — is supercharging efforts.” pic.twitter.com/PRvV8lPsjC
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 7, 2026
These comments came just one day before reports surfaced about Vance and his anti-fraud team identifying $6.3 billion in government contracts linked to potentially fraudulent businesses.
These businesses will have 30 days to prove their legitimacy and must provide evidence of a real, physical location where their operations take place.
The majority of the contracts that are currently under scrutiny were awarded under the Biden administration, a senior administration official told The Daily Caller.
“The fact that these taxpayer dollars went out without verifying if the contractors and vendors were even real or lawful businesses is a disgrace and yet another example of how the previous administration flouted basic anti-fraud guardrails,” a senior White House official told the news outlet.
The task force was created shortly after reports circulated of mass fraud that was uncovered in Minnesota earlier this year, when multiple day care centers — many run by Somali immigrants — were found to have no children enrolled, yet were still receiving massive quantities of taxpayer funds.
The Department of Justice estimated that several billion dollars have been stolen by phony organizations in Minnesota alone.
It also cited examples of waste and mismanagement of social services programs meant to provide food and health care for the needy.
In his executive order establishing the anti-fraud task force, Trump wrote, “The staggering fraud and waste in Minnesota alone is a case in point. Federal prosecutors in the State estimate that Medicaid fraud in recent years could total in the billions. Nearly 9 percent of the roughly $866 million spent on food stamps in Minnesota each year is estimated to be spent in error.”
In addition to Minnesota, Trump has called out states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and others for being the epicenter of massive federal fraud.
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