WASHINGTON — Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined Vice President JD Vance, the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, and attorneys general from 15 other states at an anti-fraud roundtable focused on combating wasteful spending, abuse, and fraud in federal benefit programs including Medicaid and SNAP.
The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud was established by President Donald Trump earlier this month to partner with state and local governments to protect taxpayer dollars and ensure government assistance programs reach those who legitimately need them.
Knudsen said the partnership between the Trump administration and state attorneys general represented a significant shift from the previous administration, and pledged that fraud against Montana taxpayers would not be tolerated.
Montana’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has already secured results this year, investigating and prosecuting several Medicaid fraud cases resulting in more than $187,709 in restitution involving false billings and fraudulent in-home care services. The unit also recently settled a civil case against a licensed clinical professional counselor with inadequate record-keeping, recovering $25,000 for the Medicaid program. A separate investigation involving a dentist accused of providing unnecessary dental services to children, totaling $2 million in alleged fraud, remains pending.
The roundtable also highlighted broader fraud recovery efforts in Montana. Commissioner of Securities and Insurance James Brown uncovered a scheme that resulted in the recovery of nearly $37 million in fraudulent Affordable Care Act insurance billings. That investigation revealed that members of Montana’s Native American communities were persuaded to disenroll from Medicaid and enroll in marketplace insurance plans, then transported to facilities in California and Arizona where Montana insurance companies were billed as much as $9,000 per day for services that in some cases were never rendered.
The Montana Department of Justice’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit is responsible for investigating and prosecuting health care providers that defraud the Montana Medicaid program or abuse, neglect, or exploit patients in Medicaid-funded care facilities.