‘There Needs To Be Consequences’: Auditor Sounds Alarm on Rising Fraud Complaints

by John Gage

Auditor Mike Foley is raising the alarm about what he says is an “explosion” of fraud allegations coming into his office. The increase in reports follows headlines made by the Trump administration over fraud investigations nationwide, including large-scale fraud in Minnesota and California.

“It’s just extraordinary the explosion of phone calls and allegations and emails and so forth that are pouring into my office,” Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley told Fox News Digital in an interview Saturday. “And as the media focuses on this more and more, it just makes the phone ring all the more, which is fine. We’re happy to receive those calls and try to filter through them and find out which ones are the most legitimate ones for us to pursue. But it’s clearly on the rise.”

Foley said that Nebraska fraud was not at “the scale of Minnesota, but we have our problems here in Nebraska as well.” The auditor said the waste, fraud, and abuse need to be fought by imposing consequences for those committing the abuse.

“There needs to be consequences when we find these kinds of abuses, and there are,” he said. “Many people are losing their jobs because they've abused the trust of having access to a credit card or other assets of the government, or there could be even further legal complications, infractions, and jail sentences even. We've put a number of people behind bars because of abuse and stealing of public funds.”

In Nebraska, one of the largest publicly reported complaints of waste was a 2000% increase in therapy services being used related to autism. The increase caused Nebraska to be included in a congressional investigation into alleged abuse of Medicaid funds.

State Sen. Brian Hardin, who chairs the Health and Human Services Committee, told The Plains Sentinel back in March that the only reasons the federal government knew there was any waste occurring were because he had worked with Governor Jim Pillen and the auditor to raise the alarm about abuse.

“Congress waved the flag because we told them about the waste,” he said. Hardin added that when it came to finding fraud, Nebraska was ahead of other states.

“Congress is asking stupid questions. They should be asking how these other states can be more like Nebraska.”

Pillen responded to the announcement of the congressional investigation, saying that he had already ordered an internal review of DHHS.

“When the widespread fraud under the Walz administration came to light, I immediately ordered my DHHS team to conduct an internal review to confirm that similar fraud is not happening here in Nebraska, and they did so,” Pillen said. “We have the safeguards in place to protect Nebraska taxpayers from the fraud that occurred under the Walz administration.”

Foley said he continues to look for fraud across all state agencies.

“I can cite so many examples of contractors that are over billing or double-billing the state, all kinds of state employee infractions of using state vehicles and state assets improperly, having contractors bill us for hours which we know they did not work, having state employees billed us for time served when we know that they were at a different place of employment, public school districts that are milking public school funds for all kinds of extravagances and so forth, but at the end of the day, the tone has to be set at the top.”

— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.