We, too, are horrified by the betrayal of America’s social safety-net systems perpetrated by dozens of individuals in Minnesota who bilked at least $1 billion from taxpayers for non-existent services and clients.

Colorado must act swiftly to triple-check that the federal dollars going out the door for programs like childcare, food pantries and cash assistance are reaching their intended targets and not subject to abuse.

However, we disagree vehemently with President Donald Trump’s attempt to freeze federal funding for Colorado and a handful of other states with zero evidence of the type of fraud we are seeing in Minnesota and Mississippi.

For years, the media has reported on fraud cases prosecuted in Minnesota by federal investigators who began their probes under President Joe Biden’s administration. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis first charged 47 defendants with stealing money from the child nutrition program. From there, the scheme began to unravel and prosecutors discovered a network of fraud.

“From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” Joseph Thompson, then acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said at the time, according to The Wall Street Journal’s excellent account. “Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.”

The scale of the fraud in Minnesota dwarfs the roughly $100 million welfare scandal that rocked Mississippi from 2016 to 2019, embroiling former NFL quarterback Brett Favre in a civil lawsuit and sullying the state’s reputation for oversight.

If such abuses are also taking place in Colorado, then our elected officials, prosecutors and law enforcement must root them out swiftly. Every dollar stolen from these programs is a dollar snatched from the hands of those truly in need. And in an increasingly expensive America, we know that these federal programs can be the difference between homelessness and stability for women and children.

On Jan. 6, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would freeze $10 billion of funding headed to Colorado, Minnesota, New York, California and Illinois for the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Social Services Block Grant. Oddly absent from the list was Mississippi.

In Colorado, TANF provides financial support to 47,000 children living in poverty, while the Child Care and Development funding keeps 27,600 kids in child care for working families, according to The Denver Post’s Meg Wingerter. Cutting off those programs would harm Coloradans from inner cities to rural counties. Whether it’s farmers down on their luck waiting for tariff pressures to ease on our Eastern Plains or service workers in the mountains struggling to get by during a historically dry winter with low tourism, these dollars keep families in their homes and kids in quality care.

Fortunately, Attorney General Phil Weiser was able to join with other states to block the Trump administration’s actions. U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian of the Southern District of New York granted a temporary restraining order against the administration’s actions.

Colorado must be proactive, however, and provide taxpayers with evidence of oversight that would prevent fraud like that which has occurred in other states.

We know that Colorado is not immune.

In September of 2024, a federal grand jury indicted seven people for conspiring to defraud Medicare and Colorado Medicaid through a series of kickbacks and bribes to get referrals that could have led to more than $40 million in false claims. The outcome of the criminal case is still pending.

Coloradans can help by reporting suspected fraud to the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. If you see something — outrageous prices billed to insurance, referrals for unnecessary services, etc — say something.

America’s safety net systems are too critical to shutter overnight, and too critical to allow waste, fraud and abuse to siphon assistance away from those in need.

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