• What Happened: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is launching a whistleblower reward program Monday offering tipsters 10 to 30 percent of fines collected from Medicare, Medicaid, money laundering, and sanctions fraudsters. Tips go to fincen.gov/whistleblower.
  • Why It Matters: Medicare and Medicaid fraud alone tops an estimated $70 billion per year. Reward payments come directly from fines collected, not from taxpayers.
  • Bottom Line: Patriots get paid. Fraudsters get exposed. This is how you drain the swamp.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a message for every American who has watched fraud bleed this country dry and wondered what they could do about it: turn them in, and get paid.

Starting Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department is launching a formal whistleblower reward program through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, giving Americans a direct financial incentive to expose fraud, money laundering, sanctions violations, and abuse of government benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

"We are encouraging whistleblowers who know about fraud, people who are stealing from the American taxpayer, to come forward," Bessent said. "At Treasury, we are setting up a website and we will be giving rewards up to 10 to 30 percent of the fines that we levy."

The rewards are not funded by taxpayers. They come directly from the fines collected from the criminals themselves. Qualifying tips must lead to enforcement actions resulting in fines over $1 million. From there the whistleblower collects between 10 and 30 percent of what Treasury and the Department of Justice recover under the Bank Secrecy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The scale of what is being targeted makes the potential payouts staggering. Medicare and Medicaid fraud alone is estimated to top $70 billion per year. A successful tip leading to a $10 million fine would put $3 million in a whistleblower's pocket. A tip leading to a $100 million recovery could make someone a very wealthy patriot overnight.

"Our citizens have a right to know that their tax dollars are not being diverted to fund acts of global terror or to fund luxury cars for fraudsters," a Treasury official told the New York Post.

The program did not come out of nowhere. Bessent traveled to Minnesota in January, which he called "ground zero" for a sprawling Somali fraud network that has allegedly stolen at least $9 billion from American taxpayers since 2018 through Medicare, Medicaid, child nutrition programs, and other federal benefit schemes. At the time Bessent said his message to the participants was simple. "We know that these rats will turn on each other." The whistleblower program is designed to make sure they do.

Vice President Vance spoke at the launch meeting of the anti-fraud task force he is leading last Friday. The IRS is simultaneously launching a dedicated fraud task force targeting misuse of tax-exempt funds. Treasury is also notifying banks to be on alert for fraudsters using foreign nationals to loot social programs.

The website is live now. Tips can be submitted confidentially at fincen.gov/whistleblower.

Patriots get paid. Fraudsters get caught. America gets its money back.