I have spent thirty years in rooms where real money changes hands — structuring private credit deals, managing family office portfolios, and testifying as an expert witness on fiduciary duty in federal and state courts. One lesson sticks: when government programs expand without strong guardrails, opportunists treat taxpayer dollars like an open bar at a wedding they didn’t pay for. On March 16, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, an interagency body charged with coordinating a government-wide strategy to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in federal benefit programs. It works alongside the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division — announced January 8, 2026, led by confirmed Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald — centralizing criminal and civil fraud enforcement across healthcare, tax, and federal benefits. Think of it as DOGE at street level, targeting the waste that honest citizens fund through their taxes. 

Americans are generous. In 2024, we gave $592.5 billion to charity, with individuals contributing $392.45 billion — a per-capita rate that ranks among the highest of any large, developed nation. We don’t object to helping neighbors in need. We object to watching those contributions vanish into luxury cars, overseas properties, and lifestyles that would make Gordon Gekko pause. Rooting out fraud isn’t heartless; it’s the prerequisite for compassion that actually reaches people who need it.

The scale demands urgency. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, based on fiscal years 2018 through 2022. That’s not a rounding error — that’s a recurring category-5 fiscal hurricane. In fiscal year 2025, GAO reported $186 billion........

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