Vice President JD Vance is accelerating the Trump administrations crackdown on government fraud, moving swiftly to deploy artificial intelligence tools and a new federal task force to identify and shut down abuse of taxpayer-funded programs.
According to Fox News, Vance, recently tapped by President Donald Trump to lead a high-profile anti-fraud task force, is already coordinating closely with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), now headed by Dr. Mehmet Oz. In Los Angeles last month, CMS flagged 70 hospice and home health providers as high-risk operations, and within a single week those entities had their federal funding suspended after being identified by the task force and CMS, Fox News Digital was told.
"As the task force to root out waste, fraud and abuse ramps up its work, we expect [the number of potentially fraudulent hospice and home health providers] to grow exponentially," a source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital. The aggressive posture reflects a broader conservative push to safeguard public funds from bad actors who exploit expansive welfare and health-care programs that have long lacked rigorous oversight.
In February, Vance and Oz announced that $259.5 million in Medicaid funds would be withheld from Minnesota over serious fraud concerns that had engulfed the states system. The move came shortly before Democratic Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harriss former running mate, revealed he would not seek a third term, underscoring the political and fiscal fallout that can follow when oversight fails.
The task force is not limiting its scrutiny to Minnesota, and Trump has made clear that Democrat-run states will be a central focus of the effort. "It seems that its usually in blue states," the president said. "If its in a red state, were going there too, but it seems that its heavily, heavily Democrat."
Vances team intends to replicate nationwide the same fraud-hunting model CMS used in Minnesota, built around an internal artificial intelligence system that flags suspicious claims for human review or automatically blocks those deemed likely fraudulent. For years, conservatives have argued that modern technology should be harnessed to protect taxpayers rather than expand bureaucracy, and this initiative appears designed to prove that point in practice.
Before the Trump administrations reforms, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and CMS had to manually dis-enroll organizations suspected of fraud, a slow and cumbersome process that allowed many schemes to persist. The AI-driven system now being deployed by the task force and partner agencies enables far more rapid, dynamic detection of suspicious billing patterns, closing loopholes that fraudsters have exploited for years.
To support this expansion, the task force is actively recruiting CMS technologists who will roll out the AI platform across the country. The goal is to create a uniform, nationwide shield against fraud in federal health programs, rather than the patchwork enforcement that has too often characterized Washingtons approach.
"Vice President Vance looks forward to carrying out the President's War on Fraud," a Vance spokesperson told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement. "The American people deserve better than being ripped off by people who hate this country, and the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud will ensure that essential taxpayer-funded services are used to support the hard-working Americans who rely on them, instead of being used by fraudsters and criminals."
Minnesota has already provided a stark example of what happens when oversight collapses under progressive governance and expansive spending. In 2022, under the Biden Department of Justice, authorities in the state opened a separate investigation into the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which prosecutors later described as a central player in one of the largest fraud schemes involving pandemic relief funds.
Over time, investigators uncovered roughly $250 million in fraudulent claims tied to the scheme, and 78 individuals were ultimately charged. Prosecutors have also indicated that the total amount connected to the broader network of fraud could reach into the billions, highlighting the scale of abuse that can flourish when federal dollars are disbursed with minimal accountability.
Earlier this month in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Vance addressed the fraud issue in response to a question from Fox News Digital, just ahead of Trumps executive order formally establishing the anti-fraud task force. Vance said that the administration has uncovered fraud totaling "$19 billion at least" since it began scrutinizing the Twin Cities, and he suggested that California is likely to be the next major front in the campaign.
"We know there's a lot of fraud in California, and we're trying to get to the bottom of exactly what it looks like and what we've done in the Trump administration," Vance said in response to a question by Fox News Digital. "And the president has really empowered us to do this, is to take the first national look at the way the American people have been defrauded over many, many years," Vance added.
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