Dakota Beacon

Everyone has heard something about the recent series of fraud committed against the federal government. A browse through the August 2026 AMAC magazine brought me face-to-face with the cover story: “War on Fraud: Inside Trump’s Crackdown on the Thieves Looting America.” What a great read in its simple, straightforward presentation!

So, what is AMAC? Association of Mature American Citizens offers a conservative alternative to the liberal AARP (American Association of Retired Persons). AARP demonstrably sides with liberal politicians, causes, and ideas. They persuade their readership to do likewise. AMAC offers news and updates of interest to the older generation of Americans as will be seen in their coverage of fraud crackdown.

Following his election to a second term as President on November 6, 2024, Trump chose Elon Musk to head up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on November 12. Trump brought Musk into the administration on January 20, 2025, Inauguration Day, to fulfill his promise to combat waste, fraud, and abuse. Democrats were outraged that someone would dare look behind the curtain to see how the federal bureaucracy spends trillions of dollars!

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was the first to fall under DOGE’s purview. USAID had an annual budget of about $44 billion. How it spent that money was disgraceful. A few examples: $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia; $2 million to promote “gender-affirming care” in Guatemala; $6 million to support Egypt’s tourism industry; and the list goes on. Trump moved to shut down USAID and the Democrats declared a constitutional crisis.

            Then came the Minnesota debacle. In 2025 two investigative reporters, Christopher Rufo from New York ’s “City Journal” and independent journalist Nick Shirley, uncovered scandals involving welfare fraud. Rufo’s report focused on Somali migrants who had stolen millions of dollars in welfare money, some of it reportedly going to the Al-Shabaab terrorist group. Concurrently, Shirley issued a video showing gross fraud tied to Somali daycare centers. Governor Tim Walz suspended his re-election campaign after he foolishly appeared to strike back against whistleblowers.

Following suspicious leads, Shirley investigated evidence involving a series of hospice frauds in California. With Shirley’s revelation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) determined it provided one-third of the nation's hospice providers based in Los Angeles even though the area only held 2.5 percent of the nation’s elderly population. Five hundred hospice centers were registered in a three-block radius of the city. CMS at once shut down 800 hospices that charged taxpayers $1.4 billion a year. Question: How does a fraud scheme grow that large without being noticed by the authorities? Answer: Rock the boat and lose the vote.

But why stop there? Some reporters did not. Ohio’s fraud came to light next. Luke Rosiak from “The Daily Caller” uncovered Ohio’s scandal. Medicaid was paying $1 billion a year in Ohio alone for in-home care for the elderly – with zero verification that those services were ever provided. Fraud is bad, but witless management on the part of government authorities makes it worse – unless they deliberately choose not to know.

For years politicians of every strip offered empty promises to end fraud, waste, and abuse. But Trump acted. And for this he has been vilified. He placed Vice President Vance in charge of administering the antifraud effort in coordination with the Department of Justice. At the time of this AMAC publication the DOJ had prosecuted more than 8000 fraud cases. The National Fraud Enforcement Division acted on over $340 million in fraud cases in the first week of creation. An interesting insert in the article lists eighteen key actions and victories alone in 2026 of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

As the AMAC article points out, turning off the flow of money to fraudsters has infuriated Democrat leaders – especially when names were named. Why? Because Democrat operational schemes were built on persuading the public that more federal programs and therefore more bureaucrats and more money was needed. Adding insult to injury, exposing fraud exposes ongoing government corruption of the deep state.

As an added vital precaution, extraordinary steps have been taken to protect whistle blowers inside the various agencies investigated.

It seems Trump was the first to bother asking basic questions into the existence of fraud. And after he did so, what other publications did their due diligence reporting on government fraud and corruption?

Finally, will the next administration allow fraud to resume? That depends on elections – assuming they, too, are honest and not corrupt.

Remember. November 3rd is coming. Take a legal citizen with you to vote.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).