A stunning report from “60 Minutes” supported some of the more shocking claims of egregious fraud and abuse in federal spending by President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency.
The report aired Sunday evening and included interviews with Bryan Vorndran, the head of the FBI’s cyber division, as well as fraud expert Linda Miller, who worked at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
‘They begin buying stolen identities so that they can begin applying for disaster loans, disaster grants, on behalf of stolen identities.’
Miller said she was glad to see that tech billionaire Elon Musk, who headed up DOGE, was making the issue of fraud such a public issue.
“To be honest, Elon Musk coming out and saying, ‘There is a huge amount of fraud,’ I welcome that message completely because finally, someone is actually saying this,” she said.
She said that much of the fraud was from foreign state actors, mostly from Russia and China. She estimated that the total amount of federal money lost through fraud every year was between $550 billion and $750 billion, and is nearing a trillion.
“What we’re really talking about is nation-state actors,” she said. “We’re talking about organized crime rings. We’re talking about using vast amounts of stolen Americans’ identities to monetize them for, you know, criminal activity.”
Among the more astounding claims was that nearly every American’s Social Security number and other private information were available for purchase on the dark web.
“Is it true that the Social Security number of just about every single American is available for sale on the dark web?” asked Cecilia Vega of CBS News.
“That is a true statement. All of our personally identifiable information — name, date of birth, former addresses, social security number — is available on the dark net and can likely be purchased,” said Vorndran.
In just one case from last year, officials concluded that $6 billion of pandemic relief money was stolen through fraud.
“When a disaster happens in the country, the fraud actors see where it’s coming. They look at the zip codes. And they begin buying stolen identities so that they can begin applying for disaster loans, disaster grants, on behalf of stolen identities,” Miller said.
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Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Miller did have a minor criticism of the work DOGE was doing. She said that too often they conflated fraud with programs that they didn’t approve of politically.
“You may not agree with what USAID does. You may not want to be investing American dollars in, you know, foreign fertilizer, for example. You may think that’s the wrong thing to be spending money on, but that’s not fraud,” she said.
“Fraud is willful deception. It involves willful deception,” she explained. “And it has to be proven in a court of law.”
The segment from “60 Minutes” can be viewed in its entirety on the show’s YouTube channel.
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