Comment on Trump crackdown uncovers $6.5B in fraud — and your taxes were wasted on diamonds, Ferraris and a boat named ‘Butt Nekkid’

FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Lovstuhagen@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Here’s the Wall Street Journal covering it.

  This is the CNN headline: Trump administration charges 455 people, including doctors, with $6.5 billion in healthcare fraud

  It has less information about the fraudsters themselves, but a key claim is repeated:

  Officials highlighted one defendant who they claim rubber stamped a student’s cardiovascular test as normal without alerting the family that his heart was enlarged. The 18-year-old college basketball player, Kaiden Francis, died weeks later during a workout.

  Oh, and check out the New York Times headline:

  Ferraris and Shell Companies: Justice Dept. Unveils Medicare Fraud Charges

  Medicare paid nearly $15 billion in 2025 for expensive wound coverings called skin substitutes, a spending spike that analysts have called one of the largest examples of waste in the federal health program’s history.

  The spending was fueled by multiple kickback schemes that enriched both the companies that manufactured skin substitutes and the doctors and nurses who applied them, according to charges the Justice Department recently filed.

  Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, announced the charges Tuesday as part of a larger suite of health care prosecutions against 455 defendants who, in total, are accused of $6.5 billion in fraudulent billing.

  …

  The charging documents describe Mr. Rowan assisting health care providers with setting up shell companies in which the manufacturer could deposit doctors’ rebates. Amounts as large as $71 million would be wired into those accounts, the documents said.

  The charges against Mr. Rowan list some of his purchases with the Medicare funds, including a $47,000 Rolex watch and a life insurance policy that cost $1 million.

  …

  “She was using human beings, American citizens, as living piggy banks,” Andrew Ferguson, the executive director of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, said of Ms. Yukee’s behavior at a news conference on Tuesday.

  She used that money, the documents say, to purchase a $600,000 Ferrari, a $865,000 Bulgari necklace and a multimillion dollar home in Hawaii, as well as to fund the construction of a “$4.6 million beach resort in the Philippines.”

  It’s the same information as in the NY Post article, but the Post article goes more in-depth.

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  • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I never said I doubt that the charges exist or that the press release was held by Todd Blanche, what I doubt is every word that comes out the administration’s fucking mouth.

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    • Lovstuhagen@hilariouschaos.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Sure, you can feel that way. We all have our own preferences…

      And a preference is just another term for a bias that has a positive connotation.

      Let us enjoy posting our own content.

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