Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Holiday shopping season is now peak season for tax fraud, and the Internal Revenue Service is warning that criminals are working just as hard as retailers in the final stretch before Christmas. Instead of chasing deals, these scammers chase Social Security numbers, bank details and login credentials they can use to hijack refunds and steal…
Meta’s ad machine is under fresh scrutiny after internal projections suggested that a double digit share of its 2024 revenue could be tied to scams and banned products, a slice of business worth tens of billions of dollars. The numbers raise a stark question about whether one of the world’s most powerful advertising platforms has…
Minnesota is confronting a welfare fraud scandal that has already produced nearly $1 billion in alleged losses, yet the emerging investigations suggest the damage may extend far beyond a single program or community. What began as a story about pandemic food aid has widened into a broader reckoning over how the state monitors public money,…
Republicans are seizing on fresh watchdog findings to argue that the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces are bleeding taxpayer dollars through lax oversight and systemic vulnerabilities. Their case hinges on a surge in improper payments, which they say reflects not just bureaucratic error but a sprawling ecosystem of fraud, abuse, and misaligned incentives. As the…
Federal auditors are warning that the Affordable Care Act’s subsidy system is far more vulnerable to abuse than officials have acknowledged, with sham applications sailing through and premium tax credits flowing to people who are no longer alive. The latest findings suggest that what was sold as a tightly controlled safety net has, in practice,…
Federal scrutiny of Minnesota’s social services system has escalated into a high-stakes clash between Washington and St. Paul, with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer accusing Governor Tim Walz’s administration of presiding over a massive fraud operation. At the center of the storm is nearly $1 billion in alleged abuse of taxpayer-funded programs and a…
San Francisco has opened a sweeping legal fight with some of the world’s biggest food companies, accusing them of profiting from ultra-processed products that fuel chronic disease. The case targets household names like Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Kraft, arguing that their business model depends on engineering cheap, addictive foods that bear little resemblance to traditional ingredients….
Allegations that nearly $1,000,000,000 in public funds were siphoned off through Minnesota welfare and food aid programs have turned Gov Tim Walz into the central figure in a sprawling political and legal fight. What began as a scandal over pandemic-era nutrition spending has widened into a test of how aggressively Minnesota and federal officials confronted…
Bank customers are facing a new wave of highly convincing phone scams that mimic real bank outreach and drain accounts in a matter of minutes. According to federal investigators, cybercriminals have already stolen $262 million from Americans in 2025 by posing as financial institution support staff and taking over victims’ accounts. I see a clear…
Cybercriminals are no longer waiting for you to click a sketchy link in an email; they are calling your phone, sounding exactly like your bank, and walking you step by step into draining your own account. In 2025, that tactic has already stripped victims of $262 million, according to federal warnings, turning routine “fraud alert”…