{"id":2575,"date":"2026-02-28T14:33:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T14:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/?p=2575"},"modified":"2026-02-28T14:33:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T14:33:44","slug":"dr-oz-cuban-migrants-escape-to-havana-with-millions-in-stolen-medicare-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/2026\/02\/28\/dr-oz-cuban-migrants-escape-to-havana-with-millions-in-stolen-medicare-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Oz: Cuban Migrants Escape to Havana with Millions in Stolen Medicare Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Title:
AP Photo\/Tom Brenner<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Neil Munro<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cuban migrants are ripping off American taxpayers via Medicare fraud and then fleeing back to Cuba with the cash, a top administration official told Fox News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis fraud is weaponized \u2026 often by foreign nationals,\u201d said Mehmet Oz, also known as Dr. Oz, who runs President Donald Trump\u2019s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). \u201cWe can\u2019t allow it to continue,\u201d he said as he described how migrants steal government funds intended to supply medical devices, such as wheelchairs, to sick Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oz said<\/a> that CMS has put a six-month \u201cnationwide moratorium\u201d on the approval of \u201cnew durable medical equipment\u201d businesses in the U.S. He explained that in some of the fraud cases, many from businesses owned by Cuban nationals, the suppliers are not providing equipment, such as government-funded wheelchairs and canes, but are instead stealing Americans\u2019 beneficiary numbers and creating fake businesses to embezzle taxpayer funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We announced a nationwide moratorium in this country for six months. You may not start a new durable medical equipment business. They\u2019re the ones who sell wheelchairs and canes, and we have enough to serve the American people \u2026 you\u2019re not even providing equipment. You\u2019re stealing their beneficiary number. You\u2019re pretending \u2014 headfake! \u2014 to ship stuff, you never ship any goods. You have no payroll. No one works for you. You never sell any products to anybody. You literally create a fake business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of these businesses are owned by Cuban nationals, by the way. They bill falsely for $5 million for a month of fake stuff. They flee back to Cuba. We try to go after the money. It\u2019s already gone. It\u2019s been shipped overseas, and everyone\u2019s looking around to see who\u2019s the last guy standing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis fraud is weaponized \u2026 we can\u2019t allow it to continue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oz\u2019s use of the term \u201cweaponized\u201d suggests that the taxpayer fraud is orchestrated by Cuba\u2019s dictatorial government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oz has already spotlighted the Democrat-backed, Somali-run fraud<\/a> in Minnesota, and the long-standing<\/a> Medicare fraud by commingled Armenian and Russian gangs in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, Trump announced that Vice President JD Vance will lead a \u201cwar on fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance told<\/a> Fox News:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

How many illegal aliens are on Medicaid? We know that it\u2019s billions and billions of dollars that should go to American citizens. It\u2019s going to illegal aliens. How many fraudulent daycare centers have been set up where that money should go to American citizens to help their kids get into childcare? Instead, it\u2019s being stolen from them by illegal aliens in our country\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a whole host of tools that we have that have never been used, and the president and I talked about this a couple of months ago and said, \u2018What if we just did everything that we could to stop the fraud that\u2019s being committed against the American taxpayer?\u2019 The president said, \u2018Great idea, let\u2019s do it,\u2019 and we\u2019re going to work on that very aggressively over the next year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In general, easy migration rules encourage foreign criminals to prey on Americans via white-collar crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting archipelago of criminal-migrant enclaves exists in many business sectors and many localities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, millions of college-graduate Americans<\/a> have seen their white-collar jobs being sold by Indian and U.S. executives<\/a> in exchange for kickbacks from Indian migrants. A huge number of Indian-origin Sikhs<\/a> and Eastern Europeans<\/a> work illegally as dangerous truck drivers, and many Chinese migrants<\/a> work in the U.S. narcotics economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January, City-Journal posted<\/a> an interview with a detective who described how migrants are stealing from Americans and government agencies along the West Coast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The two most common I investigate are credit-card fraud and elder fraud. I noticed that in cases involving a high dollar amount\u2014$1,000 or more\u2014and that target a stranger, it\u2019s almost always perpetrated by foreigners. A typical organized-crime credit-card crew would be from Romania. They will come to the United States by sneaking over the Mexican border and go up and down the I-5 corridor. They steal credit cards out of gym lockers at fitness clubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re very sophisticated. They have a computer and a printer in their car. They will steal your credit card, and if your phone\u2019s there, they will steal the SIM card. Once they get to their car, they will immediately make a fake ID that matches those credentials. Then, they\u2019ll go downtown to a jewelry store and buy a Rolex watch for $40,000. If the bank sends you an alert asking if you made the purchase, the thieves have your SIM card and your ID, so they reply, \u201cYes.\u201d Eventually we\u2019ll catch up with them, but then they just go elsewhere. They\u2019ll start out in Los Angeles, then go up to Salem, then Portland, then Vancouver, Olympia, and Seattle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though they involve large sums of money, these are nonviolent crimes, so the justice system doesn\u2019t take them that seriously. Eventually these criminals will get caught, but they are not extraditable out of state, and we\u2019re not allowed to call immigration. They\u2019ll have Romanian passports, but nobody ever picks up the phone and calls ICE because it\u2019s against the law in blue states to call them. They do a few months\u2019 time and then are out again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The criminals include Romanians<\/a>, Nigerians<\/a>, and South Americans<\/a>, the detective said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Something like one-third of the wealth in the globe is in the United States, and we\u2019re just a hair over 4 percent of the population, so it only makes sense for criminal groups to focus on America. Additionally, in blue states, it\u2019s a taboo to focus on immigrant communities. Politicians have passed \u201csanctuary state\u201d laws and reduced criminal penalties, which, in effect, are advertisements saying, \u201cWe\u2019re open for business for fraudsters. You probably won\u2019t get caught. If you do get caught, you probably won\u2019t get convicted. If you do get convicted, you won\u2019t get that much time. And you never have to worry about getting kicked out the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my experience, nearly 100 percent of high-dollar, stranger-on-stranger frauds are committed by foreigners,\u201d he said. \u201cI cannot think of one case of mine where a native-born American committed a fraud of over $1,000 against a stranger. Not in my entire career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Indian<\/a> and Chinese migrants<\/a> \u2014 including many with F-1 student visas<\/a> \u2014 are being arrested for helping Indian and Chinese criminals to scam many elderly Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, business-backed pro-migration groups such as the Cato Institute insist that migrants have lower crime rates<\/a> than Americans \u2014 as if the imported migrant criminals somehow reduce the actual number of crimes against Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Businesses favor large-scale migration because it provides the investors and CEOs with additional profits via cheaper workers, government-subsidized consumers, and apartment-sharing renters. The myriad costs of the migration, however, are imposed on ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The massive scale of fraud by migrants<\/a> is being spotlighted by Trump in the run-up to the 2026 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,\u201d Trump told the crowd of cheering Republicans and sullen Democrats during his 2026 State of the Union speech. He added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here, to the USA \u2014 and it is the American people who pay the price, in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly, crime.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe corruption \u2026 is plundering America,\u201d Trump said, adding:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

There\u2019s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. We have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that. And California, Massachusetts, Maine, and many other states are even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn\u2019t believe. So tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will take care of this problem, we\u2019re going to take care of this problem,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Munro Cuban migrants are ripping off American taxpayers via Medicare fraud and then fleeing back to Cuba with the cash, a top administration official told Fox News. \u201cThis fraud is weaponized \u2026 often by foreign nationals,\u201d said Mehmet Oz, also…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}