The US government's efforts to combat fraud have led to a series of raids and arrests, with significant progress made in recent days.
What happened
Federal, state, and local authorities have conducted a string of fresh raids and made arrests in New York and California as part of a nationwide crackdown on Medicaid fraud.
Homeland Security has also launched a massive operation to catch illegal immigrants who fraudulently stole millions of dollars in food stamps, with over $640 million in food-stamp fraud identified so far.
The government has destroyed over 2,200 illegal merchant SNAP devices and disabled more than 2,000 retailer authorization numbers, preventing an estimated $5 billion in potential fraudulent transactions.
In one notable case, prosecutors in Staten Island arrested two operators for $530,000 in billings for hundreds of phantom seniors at an adult-day-care center.
A recent study estimated that the true cost of food-stamp fraud is over $1 trillion per year, with experts warning that the problem is being driven by organized criminal groups.
