JD Vance announces major fraud discovery, outlines future protections

Vice President JD Vance’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud uncovered $245 million stolen from Americans, bringing charges against more than 80 people, members of the task force announced at a Kansas City press briefing Monday.

“What we’ve done here is say that no fraud is too small,” Vance said. “If you try to steal money from the American taxpayer, if you took funds that ought by right have gone to American small businesses or American workers, not only we’re going to cut you off, we’re going to prosecute you.”

Vance, along with U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, provided an update Monday on Operation Heartland Surge at the FBI Kansas City Field Office. The task force, in partnership with the FBI, Department of Justice, and state governments, uncovered the fraud from June 12 to Aug. 31.

They also announced the suspension of 870,000 borrowers who were committing fraud against the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), discovered in the same investigation.

“If you screwed the American taxpayer, the federal government is now going to say you’re cut off, no more,” Vance said. “You shouldn’t be applying anymore, and if you do apply, you’re no longer able to get those benefits. Pretty common sense.”

The PPP is a federal loan program that launched to assist small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was created to save jobs and keep good American businesses alive during COVID,” Blanche said of the PPP. “But some fraudsters treated it like a personal piggy bank.”

One of the fraudsters, Jaimie Gray of the Western District of Missouri that includes Kansas City, filed hundreds of federal loans for dozens of alleged businesses he claimed to own, totaling $55 million in fraud, Blanche detailed.

“For years, fraudsters got the message that Washington would look the other way,” Blanche said. “That era is over. We’re charging more defendants. We’re convicting more. We’re taking the money back. We’re working with every single federal agency to use every tool in our toolbox to go after these fraudsters. The Department of Justice will continue expanding our reach across the country to pursue all fraud, no matter how large or no matter how small.”

Administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler called these criminals “pandemic fraudsters” and said the recently uncovered dollars add to a total of $49 billion in fraud across all 50 states. Vance called Loeffler “the most zealous anti-fraud person in the entire administration.”

“Small businesses are our nation’s largest job creators, and among our nation’s biggest taxpayers,” Loeffler said. “Like every taxpayer, they deserve to know that programs that they fund are not siphoned away by criminals who would rather steal from hardworking Americans than become hardworking Americans.”

The pursuit of fraudsters has gone international, where the FBI has chased top criminals across three continents, Patel said. The FBI has captured six of the top “most wanted” fraudsters, tied to $2 billion in theft.

These crimes against American taxpayers affect real, hard-working people, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, said, referencing his own father who worked “seven days a week in the midnight shift, so we could go on a vacation once a year.”

“Those are the people who are being robbed, and they have faces, and they have names, and they have families,” he said. “And then you think of the other victims – the people who desperately need access to some of these programs, the family who has a son or a daughter with a disability, or family desperately looking to get their elderly parent into a hospice center – they’re being robbed.”

Gov. Mike Kehoe, R-Missouri, said small businesses are “personal” to him because before entering politics, he was a small business owner who used two SBA loans to get started. He promised his support to the vice president’s fraud team and pledged to protect honest-working Missourians.

Vance rebuked the Biden administration for ignoring the fraud accumulating under the PPP program and called on congressional Democrats to join the “commonsense” issue. But most congressional Democrats have succumbed to “far-left advocacy groups” and have “refused to help us at every step of the way,” Vance said.

He thanked Democratic state leaders who have joined the fight and promised to hunt down fraudsters in every state, red or blue, despite the lack of congressional bipartisanship.

“This administration is not going to let you steal from people who we’re supposed to be taking care of in this country, so that you can get rich while the American taxpayer works their tail off in order to fund our government,” he said. “They’re working to fund the United States government. They are not working to fund fraudsters, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”

(Image credit: Screenshot/X/BennyJohnson)