Transcription
All right, so I think we should talk about the fraud in America because a couple of weeks ago, we found out something that should have never happened in this country. A YouTuber went to Minnesota and started asking some very basic questions. How deep is this fraud here inside of Minnesota?
>> It is far worse than anybody can imagine.
He walked up to daycare centers that were allegedly making millions of dollars a year. And what he found shocked the world. A second hearing on February 10th could put Governor Tim [music] Waltz and Attorney General Keith Ellison under oath. Chairman James Comr accusing both men of quote either being asleep at the wheel or complicit in the alleged schemes that drained taxpayer dollars from social services programs. President Trump, meanwhile, chiming in today as well, calling Walt a quote crooked governor.
Now, that video got over a 100 million views and [music] within just days of that video going viral. The federal government froze roughly $200 million in childcare funding to the whole state. But now the whole country is asking a very basic question, which is why did it take a young YouTuber to find out that there's allegedly systemic fraud in the country? Why didn't the media, the regulators, the IRS, anyone catch any of it before a young independent journalist?
And I think Minnesota isn't really the whole story. Minnesota is just what we found this week. And this could be the tip of the iceberg because when you zoom out, some people say that fraud, waste, and abuse across the federal government could be as high as $1.5 trillion dollars a year. Now, that number is so big it almost sounds fake, but let me just put it into perspective. The average American pays roughly $15,000 a year in federal income taxes. Now, over a working person's lifetime, that's about $600,000, which means one year of $1.5 trillion in fraud is the entire lifetime of 2.5 million Americans paying federal income taxes every single year.
Okay. Now, an even better way to understand it is that [music] if our tax dollars were not used for fraud, and if it really is $1.5 trillion like some people estimate, then we could exempt, in other words, not pay income taxes on up to $200,000 a year. Now whether that number is 1.5 trillion and whether that's too high or too low or somewhere in between almost doesn't even matter at this point because once people start believing that their work and their honesty and their taxes are being allegedly stolen, then trust collapses and we cease to have a country. We just have an LLC.
And when trust collapses, [music] people stop wanting to go to work. It's a waste of time to vote and it's a waste of energy to pay taxes SO THAT WE CAN GIVE IT TO PEOPLE THAT ARE GOING TO STEAL FROM US AND THEN WE CAN SEND IT TO OTHER COUNTRIES THAT HATE US.
>> And that's a problem.
So, in this video, I want to talk about what this story in Minnesota actually represents, why it's resonating so much right now, and what it says about our institutions and our leadership, and maybe more importantly, trying to understand why all of this is happening. I got to sit down with Nick Shirley to help me answer some of those questions. So, with that said, let's get into it. Hi, my name is Andre Jick. Hope you're doing well. Come for the finance and stay for the fraud.
Now, these are not the kind of videos I want to be making, but this is the kind of stuff that makes people lose confidence in the idea of a country because the extent of this alleged fraud is something we don't really know yet. No one knows how big this thing is, but in Minnesota alone, they estimate something like $9 billion worth of fraud and theft has been happening since 2018.
>> I want them to round up anyone who is involved in defrauding American taxpayers of what apparently amounts to $9 billion in a very, very small state.
Now, what's interesting is the response from the governor of Minnesota, Tim Waltz, the guy whose job it is to technically protect the people and his state. And I thought his response would be something like, "Wow, this is crazy. Thank you, Nick Shirley, for revealing this. I didn't know this was happening in my state. If this is true, and it certainly looks like something's off, we better start arresting people and holding them accountable, and I will personally make sure that every single dollar is paid back to taxpayers." But that's not what he said. Here's what he had to say instead.
>> This is what happens when they target communities for their own benefit. This is what happens when they scapegoat. And this is what happens when they no longer hide the idea of white supremacy.
Since when has fraud ever been about identity? Fraud is fraud regardless of where you come from or what you look like. But for some reason, it's the white supremacists. And if you think about it in retrospect, it almost makes a lot of sense why he was one of the biggest critics of Elon Musk and Doge. When Elon said, "If you want to know who's committing the fraud, look who's complaining the loudest."
>> One of the things I remember from the PayPal days was that you know who complains the loudest uh is the fraudsters. Okay. So,
>> so anyway, after that video went viral and after the response, a lot of people were rightfully very angry. They started making videos saying that they're going to stop paying their taxes and they're going to stop voting.
>> If JD Vance does not push for treason with capital punishment against Tim Walls, do not vote for him. If Trump does not deliver that, do not vote for him.
Now, here's the thing. If fraud is proven, because it's still allegedly fraud, right? Then the system allowed it to exist. But even if it turns out to be incompetence rather than criminal intent, and that's not much better because in both cases, the protections that are supposed to safeguard our tax money didn't work.
Now, so far, the federal government has frozen funding. But the funding wasn't frozen because of an internal audit caught something. And it wasn't paused because regulators saw something off. The funding was frozen after millions of people saw that their money was allegedly being stolen. And the fact that the response came after the video went viral, not before, doesn't look good. But maybe the craziest part about this is that in Washington state, a senator has already pre-filed legislation that would make it harder for the public to find the information about daycarees and their operators. So, I guess the government seems to think less transparency is the answer to the potential fraud. And all of this took a young YouTuber to uncover. And he's here with me today to help me answer a question that I have, which is why is all of this being done? And how is it all connected? What else did you find when you were doing that story?
Yeah. So, the daycarees and the fraud is only one part of it. But what I think really keeps it all together is [music] Minnesota has some of the most liberal voter ID laws. For instance, do you remember when they used to say that voter ID was racist?
>> Yes.
>> So, essentially right now in Minnesota, if you're a legal citizen, you can vouch on behalf of eight people to vote. [music] So if you're having an election and on election day you go and you show that you're a citizen, you're a legal [music] citizen of the United States, you can then go and vouch on behalf of eight people to then vote that same day. And so essentially what that means is one person who's a legal citizen has the power to say, "Yep, that person is who they say they are." And they can vouch on behalf of that person for eight people. So all you have to do is literally say, "Yes, that person is who they say they are." You don't have to show any legal paperwork or anything in that vote then counts. [music]
So if one person has their actual identity and their ID and a place of residency, they can vouch for up to eight other people who might not have their own independent verification.
Yes, that's insane. And that part obviously blew me away and I really wanted to fact check this. And it turns out that's actually true. One person with an ID can vouch for up to eight people. And it doesn't just stop there. It's not just up to eight people. If you work for certain residential places, like for example, group homes, shelters, assisted living facilities, child care centers, the rules actually allow staff members to vouch for an unlimited number of residents at that location. And that means one person can vouch for as many people as they want as long as they work in the same place.
>> And now to be clear, that doesn't mean that fraud is automatically happening, but it does mean that it could potentially be happening because think about it, they're taking them for their word, not even showing any form of identification,
>> right? So the system was designed to be such that we might not know about this automatically.
>> Yes. Because if we did, then you wouldn't have had to been the one to expose it.
>> Yeah. And it should concern everybody because this is stuff that [music] will change the shape of a country or a state or a city just based off of this vouching.
What was interesting to me is that so much of the media is attacking you personally. And I saw them calling you a MAGA influencer rather than focusing on what the real story actually is. And I thought that was really interesting.
>> Yeah. It's very disheartening in a way that I just went and showed people what was happening. Now, you may not like my style of journalism or you may not trust my style of journalism. However, I know that I showed you the truth and you can watch the video. It's not hyperedited or anything. The interactions are for what they are. But it was weird that they're now coming after the person who investigated the fraud versus the people doing the fraud.
>> Right. It's weird because fraud should be fraud. It's not a left versus right or Republican versus Democrat.
>> No. And that's the problem is now you're seeing people literally coming out supporting fraud. But fraud is fraud and a crime is a crime. And if a population is creating 89% of the fraud happening inside your state, that doesn't make you a racist. That just means you're speaking the facts.
So, as of right now, it seems hypothetically speaking, if somebody wanted to use fraud to get more votes, to get into power, or to get money for a business that may or may not exist, the system will not automatically prevent them from doing so.
>> Yes, that's what it seems like.
>> Okay. So after talking to Nick and seeing this kind of failure of oversight, if we want to call it that, especially in areas like political donations and voting, which seems to be at the center of this, the uncomfortable question is if the system is not catching the fraud automatically, then why would we assume it stops there? Is this just a Minnesota story or is this happening across every state in the whole country? And the more I research this, it seems like the answer is most likely fraud in America is much bigger than Minnesota and the childare centers. And here's just one big example of that.
Just recently, HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, discovered that in 2024 alone, over $5 billion went to over $200,000 inactive accounts. Now, if you're not sure what HUD even is, HUD is supposed to help people afford private housing, specifically low-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities. And they do that by paying a portion of their rent to landlords, the people who own the houses. And the tenant is typically responsible for paying the rest, which is about 30%. So, the government covers 70%, the person pays 30%. Okay? But in 2024 alone, over $5 billion were misappropriated. Of that money, 77 million went to people who weren't even alive. 150 million went to social security numbers that didn't even exist. 288 million of that went to pay excessively high rent, so maybe things like luxury housing, which obviously this isn't supposed to be for, and 5.2 billion to inactive SAM.gov accounts.
What is SAM.gov? SAM.gov is the federal government's master database for who's allowed to get taxpayer money. If an account is not active, like in this case, payments were automatically supposed to stop. So, these accounts were not supposed to be eligible at all, but somehow they still got the money, which means billions of taxpayer dollars were sent to entities that failed. the most basic verification check.
So when people look at this, how does anyone interpret this? Either the system's broken at best on some technological level, and that's giving it the benefit of the doubt, which is a stretch at this point, or the system is used intentionally for fraud because we're assuming you'd have to manually override these payments sent to these inactive accounts. Otherwise, the money couldn't have been spent. So, how did that happen?
The GAO estimates that based on what we know today, and this is just what we know, what's been revealed, not the real number, but from the limited information that we have, over the last 20 years or so, the government has misappropriated roughly $2.7 trillion. And that's just what we know. And that was information as of October 2024. So, this is not recent. the real number is probably way way higher.
Now, arguably the most upsetting thing about this is that it seems like the government, and I mean everyone involved, the left, the right, the politicians, the media, the institutions, everyone seems complicit in this. Like somehow our government knows exactly down to the last dollar how much we owe in taxes, how many Venmo payments we sent over $600. But somehow the government just can't find where potentially trillions of dollars have gone missing to. So then I guess the question is how do we fix it? Because it's getting to ironic levels of bad.
>> There are wait lists for these programs that are years long. There is fraud. There is
>> if child care is cut, I'm unable to work or go to school. I understand fraud is bad.
>> It just seems like people are given a script. Just read this when they question you and then the truth kind of slips out accidentally. And this is where it becomes very obvious that the problem is not left versus right because both sides had an opportunity to fix it, but they didn't. Take Doge for example. When Elon proposed the Department of Government Efficiency, it shouldn't have been a left versus right idea. It's a very simple idea. Let's go look for fraud. And when he found it, the people in charge decided they didn't want to be accountable because opening the books meant risking what you might find, which is that everyone is guilty. So, they didn't vote on it. And we've seen the same behavior from the other side. And it's why people don't trust either side anymore. Because when it matters, neither side wants to apply the rules to themselves.
And if the rules are not going to hold people accountable, here's what's going to happen. And it's slowly starting to happen already. It's not the fraud itself, but what it does to people's trust and how it affects the future of the country. Once people believe the system is corrupt, once they think rules only apply to certain people, something in a country sort of breaks and it's very hard to fix once it's broken. Once people stop believing in ideals and the rule of law, they stop believing that anything matters cuz then why should I go to work? Why should I pay my taxes? They stop believing in fairness. They stop believing that playing by the rules is even worth it. And that's when people start to compare America to countries they call corrupt.
It's one of the biggest reasons why my family fled to come to the US. We wanted opportunity. We wanted fairness. Law and order, a place where you could achieve something based on merit. But when stories like this break out, it means dishonesty might make you some money. It might even get you elected. So it's like, okay, then once I'm in power, well then it's my turn to steal. And I think once that happens, it doesn't matter how many laws you pass or how many audits you try to have or how many press conferences you hold. You can't enforce legitimacy. And legitimacy, by the way, is built on a very simple idea. The rules apply to everyone or they apply to no one. And right now it seems that millions of Americans just realized that they were potentially cheated out of millions and millions if not billions of dollars. And it should have taken an independent young journalist, a YouTuber to expose it. But that seems to be where we are.
Having said that though, I want to thank Nick Shirley and his friend David for doing the research on this video and bringing light to this story that sparked this whole conversation. I want to thank Graham Stefen and Jack Selby who got Nick to come out to Las Vegas for the Ice Coffee Hour, which is how I met him. If you're interested in that story, I'll leave a link down below. I highly recommend you watch it. And I also want to thank Elon Musk for buying Twitter because a part of me wonders if he never did, would this story ever have seen the light of day? Or would it have been labeled some right-wing conspiracy theory with flawed journalism from some young kid who used to be a prankster? I don't know. But I think all of us would love to see our politicians held accountable. And at least now we know. And hopefully we move in the right direction. I'd love to know your comments in the comment section down below. As always, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Smash the like button. Subscribe if you haven't already. I'd love to see you back here next week. I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.