Vance says Biden admin 'turned off' anti-fraud protections, debuts new task force with focus on Somali schemes

Vance was joined by Cabinet and administration officials, including White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The vice president, Ferguson and Miller delivered brief opening remarks before the meeting was closed to the press to further privately discuss their planned actions to combat fraud nationwide.

"We think fraud has been a problem for a long time," Vance explained. "It became a massive, massive problem under the Biden administration. We're going to do a number of things. First of all, we're going to turn back on those anti-fraud protections so that all of these Cabinet officials are looking at what's going on and focusing on it."

"I think that most citizens probably assume that there's some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits," Miller said. "The reality is that there is not. This is particularly true in blue states, willfully true in blue states, in which all of these programs are operated entirely on the honor system."

Many of those implicated in the fraud scheme come from the Somali community in Minnesota. 

"What we've seen is Somali fraudsters at an industrial scale, taking advantage of that program to the tune of millions and millions of dollars," Vance added. "And there are two separate tragedies there. The first tragedy is that you have people who pay into the federal government, who pay into the IRS, who pay their taxes, expecting that those taxes will go to help their fellow citizens."

Ferguson noted that the misuse of funds goes as far as to create public mistrust in Americans paying taxes that go toward welfare. 

"Americans have turned over trillions of their tax dollars to social welfare programs to help their neighbors and fellow citizens through hard times," Ferguson said. "They've done so on the basis of social trust, the belief that their governments, state and federal, will do the right things with their dollars and that their fellow citizens will honestly participate in these programs."

Friday's task force meeting is the first of what is expected to be many meetings following the Trump administration's push to root out fraud in the U.S.

The 70 hospice and home health providers had their funding paused in just one week after being identified by the task force and CMS, Fox News Digital learned. 

"You have families who need these services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes," Vance said during Friday's meeting. "Instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources."