Fraud is bad
There should be far less of it. Ideally, the amount of fraud perpetrated against state and federal welfare programs should be zero. That’s my controversial opinion.
Someone else who doesn’t like fraud is Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson. Over the next week, Thompson is scheduled to record his 50th, 51st, and 52nd convictions in the sprawling Feeding Our Future scandal, for which he has served as lead prosecutor since the inception of the investigation more than 4 years ago.
Last week he told KSTP’s Jay Kolls that his office has investigated, so far, more than $1 billion in fraud committed against state programs. This week, Deena Winter of the Minnesota Star Tribune, profiled Thompson.
Winter asks the billion-dollar question:
Who’s responsible for all of this?
As a prosecutor, I’m expected to say the defendants are responsible for their crimes — and they are. But if we pretend that’s the whole story, we’re lying to ourselves. This fraud crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the result of widespread failure across nearly every level of leadership in Minnesota: Politicians who turned a blind eye. Agencies that failed to act. Prosecutors and law enforcement who didn’t push hard enough. Reporters who ignored the story. Community leaders who stayed silent. And a public that wanted to believe it couldn’t happen here.
This isn’t just a few criminals exploiting the system, this is a system that’s been begging to be exploited. We left the door wide open, and now our state has been ransacked. If we keep ignoring the truth, we’re going to lose something far more important than money. We’re going to lose the Minnesota we know and love.
He’s correct, of course. So what to do next? Joe Thompson is already doing his part.
I hate the metaphor, because I’ve never played ice hockey, but you need to skate to where the puck is going to, not where it’s been.
Fraudsters who are still active are already two, three scams downrange, or they’ve returned to the tried-and-true scams <cough> childcare, EBT <cough>.
State agencies like the Dept. of Human Services (DHS) need to spend far greater efforts at gatekeeping, keeping potential fraudsters from even enrolling as program vendors.
Management at DHS and other agencies need to think like fraudsters, not like social workers.
Cut off the money flow immediately to questionable vendors and be willing to suffer the name-calling and lawsuits that follow. If you do that, taxpayers and citizens will have your back and will understand if a few good apples have to be made whole afterward.