Taxpayers have been getting robbed blind for years, and the people doing it have barely broken a sweat.
Now a Trump administration official is going straight to the source and putting the alleged fraudsters on camera.
And what Dr Oz found on the streets of New York City is the kind of thing that should have every hard-working American demanding answers.
Dr Oz Takes the Fight to Flushing, Queens
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr Mehmet Oz joined influencer Nick Shirley to confront alleged fraudsters in New York City, accompanying Shirley to a variety of elderly daycare centers and medical equipment companies across the city, confronting people who they say are committing both Medicare and Medicaid fraud — many of whom either did not speak English or seemed hesitant to answer questions about the services they provide.
Shirley claimed: “One of the largest fraud schemes in America is taking place in New York City as billions of dollars are being defrauded by organized Korean and Chinese mafias, along with other foreigners operating and stealing taxpayer dollars.”
The numbers behind that claim are staggering.
The epicenter of the spike in spending is the bustling neighborhood of Flushing, Queens — the densest cluster of social adult daycare facilities in the country, with 64 within a one-mile radius, according to a CBS News analysis of Medicaid data.
Medicaid paid adult daycare providers $3.35 billion nationwide in 2024, and 17% of that money went to the 375 facilities across New York state — more than any other state.
From 2018 to 2024, the neighborhood’s Medicaid-eligible senior population grew about 20%, the same as the rest of the country. But the number of seniors that its social adult daycares billed for nearly quintupled — up 390%.
Put simply: the population barely budged, but the billing exploded. Someone needs to explain that math.
The facilities in Flushing bill Medicaid for the equivalent of more than 90% of local Medicaid-eligible seniors. That is not a rounding error. That is a system being gamed.
Dr Oz stated: “Social adult daycares over the last 3 years have generated $2.5 billion.”
Oz also pointed out that there are twice as many durable medical suppliers in South Florida as McDonald’s, because it’s easier to open one than a bank account, alleging that the Cuban government is involved there. “All you’re doing is gaming the system, and the fact that we didn’t audit it, didn’t catch it, didn’t stop it, and they’re probably out there making money infuriates me,” Oz said.
Oz drove the point home: “It should bother folks out there, ’cause it’s your tax dollars paying for this.” When asked whether it’s literally impossible for someone to be operating a durable medical company inside of an apartment, Oz replied, “Inside of an apartment with no goods and two other durable medical equipment suppliers? That’s a major red flag — the kind you walk into battle with.”
Federal Prosecutors Have Already Started the Clock
This isn’t just a YouTube investigation. Federal law enforcement is already moving.
In February, federal prosecutors charged two Queens men, including a Flushing pharmacy owner who also operated two social adult daycare centers, in an alleged $120 million scheme against Medicare and Medicaid.
The proliferation of the facilities has caught the attention of federal authorities, who confirmed they are investigating across New York whether the rapid spread of centers catering to seniors is indicative of fraud.
And Dr Oz is not letting state officials off the hook either.
In a video message, Oz said New York spends more than $100 billion a year on Medicaid, the second highest in the nation. He said New York’s average spending on each beneficiary is more than $12,500, 36% higher than the national average. “As a result, New York’s average Medicaid spending per resident was the highest in the country, nearly 80% higher than the national average,” Oz said.
He argued New York has turned a program intended to help the most vulnerable into “a massive jobs program reimbursed by federal taxpayers.”
Governor Kathy Hochul’s office pushed back, naturally.
A spokesperson for Hochul told Fox News Digital: “Well before the Trump administration even took office, Governor Hochul was leading efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse — including sweeping reforms that shut down hundreds of wasteful Medicaid middlemen and saved over $2 billion for state and federal taxpayers while protecting home care for those who need it.” The spokesperson added: “But let’s be clear about the real goal for Donald Trump and Washington Republicans: eliminating programs that support our most vulnerable and ripping away healthcare from everyday New Yorkers.”
That response is telling. Hochul’s team couldn’t dispute the numbers, so they attacked the motive.
What This Means for Every Taxpayer Footing the Bill
Nick Shirley has been on this trail for a while now.
His Minnesota investigation video garnered over 116 million views on X and 1.6 million views on YouTube — numbers that most traditional newsrooms would trumpet as a major success.
Shirley’s latest video report comes after the reporter told Fox News the “left-wing media” had put a “target” on his back. He said he has to be more careful about going out in public now, following his viral reports on suspected fraud in Minnesota and other places.
But the bigger story here isn’t Shirley. It’s the scale of what’s allegedly been happening with nobody watching.
Derek Adams, a partner at Potomac Law Group, said Oz’s claims of rampant fraud in social adult daycare programs in New York — including paying seniors to say they are attending but not actually providing any services — are spot on. He said he is glad Oz is raising awareness of the issue, which hurts legitimate providers. “The government needs to do more on the issue,” Adams said. “There have been far, far too few actions.”
And the problem doesn’t stop at the New York state line.
CBS’s earlier reporting found an extreme concentration of red-flag hospices in Los Angeles County, where California prosecutors charged 21 suspects in April in an alleged $267 million hospice fraud. Federal prosecutors in Minnesota say billions may have been lost across several high-risk programs there.
The pattern is national. The money is real. And for years, the people running these alleged schemes apparently calculated that nobody would come knocking.
Dr Oz just knocked.
The Trump administration has made fraud in government health programs a top enforcement priority, and Dr Oz has been the tip of that spear — taking the fight directly to the addresses where the billing is happening and asking the questions that state regulators apparently never bothered to ask. When a neighborhood of seniors is being billed at a rate that covers nine out of ten Medicaid-eligible residents, and enrollment quintupled while the population barely moved, that isn’t a paperwork error. That’s a business model built on stealing from the American taxpayer.
The Democrat politicians who run New York have had years to address this. They didn’t. Now the federal government is doing the job for them — and the people who built their careers promising to protect the vulnerable are calling it a political attack.
That tells you everything you need to know.
Sources: Mediaite, CBS News, Fox News Digital, The Gateway Pundit, Townhall, CNN Politics, Retirement.media