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Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I have mentioned (and used) the TOPS system, our state’s online checkbook register, multiple times. It’s a great way to see who our state is paying and for what. I noticed recently (within the last 6 months) that the people who run it made it significantly harder to use: I’m not sure why, but at some point they made it so you can only go month by month.** I had a reader kindly volunteer his time and skill at computer programming to come up with a way to automate TOPS searches so I, and now you since the program is public, don’t have to click and wait month by month to find what we need. The program this person came up with lives online and is linked first below. They titled it a TOPS scraper. It’s pretty i...
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Audits Across 28 States Halt $5.7 Billion in Improper Spending
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Red State, Approved, National

Audits Across 28 States Halt $5.7 Billion in Improper Spending

By Ben Smith | RedState.com For years, fraud has been dismissed as a right-wing talking point from the Trump administration. A new report from state financial officers makes that claim harder to ignore. Across 28 states, auditors say they identified and stopped $5.7 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse in a single year. Those findings span Medicaid eligibility systems, local government budgets, payroll controls, and nonprofit oversight. The money did not disappear into thin air. It was tracked, documented, and stopped once someone chose to look. The State Financial Officers Foundation’s 2025 Oversight Report lays out what 40 state treasurers, auditors, and comptrollers say they uncovered after digging into eligibility systems, payment flows, an...
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Arapahoe Community College Battles Fake Students Exploiting Financial Aid Programs
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DENVER7, Approved, Local

Arapahoe Community College Battles Fake Students Exploiting Financial Aid Programs

By: Natalie Chuck, Joe Vaccarelli | Denver7 Arapahoe Community College is one of several local schools fighting to identify "ghost students" before they enroll, Denver7 Investigates has found. EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was produced in collaboration with our partners at ABC News.  LITTLETON, Colo. — After the COVID-19 pandemic led to more online learning, community colleges and other higher learning centers have had to deal with a new phenomenon that’s hard to see: "ghost students." "Ghost students" are scammers who create fake identities or steal someone else’s to enroll in school, apply for federal financial aid and make off with the money, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. An ABC News investigation found that colleges across the country...
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Medicaid billing error cost Colorado tens of millions, officials acknowledge
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Approved, Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary, Red State

Medicaid billing error cost Colorado tens of millions, officials acknowledge

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project HCPF really did accidentally pay millions in Medicaid claims. In an earlier op ed about Colorado's Medicaid expansion (see the first link below) and how that puts our state at higher risk of fraud, waste, and/or abuse, I asked the Colorado Division of Healthcare Policy and Financing, HCPF, the state unit which adminsiters Medicaid, about what they do to prevent or stop such problems.Their spokesperson responded with:“We constantly look out for fraud, waste and abuse (FWA) across all services & programs, but some programs or services are more susceptible to FWA than others. We have various processes/procedures in place for ‘high risk’ services to prevent inappropriate payments from going out the door. Tho...
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Congress Moves Closer to Cutting Off Taxpayer Funds to Taliban
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Just The News, Approved, National

Congress Moves Closer to Cutting Off Taxpayer Funds to Taliban

By Jerry Dunleavy | Just the News Congress is now one step closer to ensuring U.S. taxpayer dollars don't end up in Taliban coffers. Momentum is building in Congress to formally ban U.S. taxpayer dollars from funding the Taliban, after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday followed the House’s lead in passing the “No Taxpayer Dollars for Terrorists” bill. The bill – which “requires the Department of State to develop and implement a strategy to discourage foreign countries and nongovernmental organizations from providing financial or material support to the Taliban” – passed in the Senate committee on a 12-10 party-line vote, with all Republicans voting for the bill and all Democrats voting against it. The Taliban conducted a lightni...
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Treasury Secretary Says Massive Federal Fraud of Up to $600 Billion a Year is Draining US Budget
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TownHall.com, Approved, National

Treasury Secretary Says Massive Federal Fraud of Up to $600 Billion a Year is Draining US Budget

By Matt Vespa | Townhall Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently visited Minnesota, where he spoke with citizen journalists, local politicians, and law enforcement officials about the ongoing fraud allegations that have engulfed the state. The amount of money stolen is reportedly in the billions, maybe even the hundreds of billions. That figure was corroborated by Mr. Bessent, who said that on average, around 10 percent of the budget, around $300-600 billion, is stolen every year. He made these points to reporter Christopher Rufo: https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2010391724410261880?s=20 This story comes after YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a viral video where he exposed these reportedly fraudulent daycare centers, the most infamous being “The Learing Center.”...
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Denver Mayor’s Sanctuary City Legal Costs Reach Full $2 Million Limit
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, Local

Denver Mayor’s Sanctuary City Legal Costs Reach Full $2 Million Limit

By Deborah Grigsby | The Denver Gazette The bill for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s legal defense for that March 5 hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on “sanctuary” cities has reached its $2 million contractual limit. Just as the year closed out on Dec. 30, a fifth payment, in the amount of $950,000 — almost half of the value of the entire contract — was made from the city’s general fund to Covington & Burling LLC, the D.C.-based law firm that represented Johnston and the city during the highly publicized congressional hearing. The payment now brings the total for Johnston’s defense to $2 million, the exact payment cap set forth by the contract city officials entered into shortly before the hearing in Washington, D.C.  ...
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Minnesota Fraud Scandal Raises New Questions About Obama Era Policies
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ZeroHedge, Approved, Commentary, National

Minnesota Fraud Scandal Raises New Questions About Obama Era Policies

By Tyler Durden (authored by X user Saggezza Etern) | Commentary, Zero Hedge Obama’s Billion-Dollar Minnesota Fraud Empire The Heist You Paid For Imagine waking up tomorrow to find your bank account empty. Every dollar you saved for your children’s tuition, your retirement, your security—gone. Now imagine looking out the window and seeing the thief driving a Porsche bought with your money, laughing as he waves a government-issued thank you note. This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is the reality of the American taxpayer in the wake of the single largest COVID-era fraud scheme in the nation’s history. While you were locked down, masked up, and worrying about the price of eggs, a sophisticated network of fraudsters in Minnesota was siphoning off a quarter of a billio...
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Obama’s Refugee Machine Has Led to Massive Fraud and the Looting of America
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ZeroHedge, Approved, Commentary

Obama’s Refugee Machine Has Led to Massive Fraud and the Looting of America

By: Tyler Durden, Authored by X user Saggezza Etern | Commentary, Zero Hedge Obama’s Billion-Dollar Minnesota Fraud Empire The Heist You Paid For Imagine waking up tomorrow to find your bank account empty. Every dollar you saved for your children’s tuition, your retirement, your security—gone. Now imagine looking out the window and seeing the thief driving a Porsche bought with your money, laughing as he waves a government-issued thank you note. This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is the reality of the American taxpayer in the wake of the single largest COVID-era fraud scheme in the nation’s history. While you were locked down, masked up, and worrying about the price of eggs, a sophisticated network of fraudsters in Minnesota was siphoning off a quarter of a bill...
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Colorado Congressman Accuses Polis Administration Of Mismanaging Road Funds
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kdvr.com, Approved, State

Colorado Congressman Accuses Polis Administration Of Mismanaging Road Funds

By: Hanna Powers | KDVR FOX31 DENVER (KDVR) — A Colorado congressman is accusing the state of mismanaging transportation dollars, arguing that despite record funding, roads across Colorado are in worse shape than ever. Rep. Gabe Evans, who represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, shared an exclusive letter with FOX31 that he is sending directly to Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Department of Transportation Executive Director Shoshana Lew. In the letter, Evans raises concerns about roadway safety, crumbling infrastructure, and what he describes as a failure to prioritize basic road maintenance over mass transit and climate-focused projects. “This stretch of I-25 is one of the busiest highways in the state,” Evans told FOX31, pointing to the corridor that ...
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