By Janice Hisle

CINCINNATI—The United States’ first nationwide surge against food-assistance fraud has led to charges against more than 40 suspects in schemes worth $45 million so far.

On Oct. 21, at the Cincinnati FBI office, Vice President JD Vance and other officials told reporters about the results of the seven-week, multi-agency enforcement effort.

About $42 million of the alleged fraud involved the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps.

Vance called SNAP “one of the most important social service programs that we have in the United States of America.”

Ensuring that fellow citizens and American children do not have to go to bed hungry is “one of the most important and sacred things that our tax dollars go to,” he said.

“Fraudsters steal from the mouths of hungry children in order to get rich themselves,” he said, noting that members of his own family benefited from these important programs while he was growing up in an underprivileged home.

Stealing from hungry children is reprehensible, he said, adding, “We’re done looking the other way when it comes to fraud.”

One alleged fraudster known as “Shawty Dread” is connected to $4.4 million in alleged fraud against the SNAP program, Vance said.

The suspect allegedly used his ill-gotten gains to fund a lavish lifestyle, which included purchasing a private jet, officials said, adding that the suspect flaunted his expensive purchases on social media.

About 220,000 Americans could have eaten for the entire month of October with the stolen SNAP funds, Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

“Every instance of SNAP fraud has two victims: families in dire need and taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

At the news conference, Blanche emphasized the impact fraud has on its direct victims, as exemplified by one real-life story that he said stands out to him. A woman with children aged 3 to 12 took them to the grocery store and loaded up a cart with food. But when she tried to pay for the purchases with a SNAP card, Blanche said, the cashier informed her: “There’s no money. You can’t buy this food.”

Unbeknownst to the woman, fraudsters had found a way to siphon all of the funds from the card. As a result, the woman was not only humiliated in front of her children, but also ended up having to take out a loan to put food on the table, Blanche said.

Enforcement efforts will continue to be a focus under President Donald Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, both leaders said.

Vance heads that group; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson serves as its co-chair.

The vice president’s leadership of the task force has been “one of the most important things that any vice president has ever done,” Ferguson said, because fraud enforcement is needed to restore “social trust.”

Every day, working people “spend part of their day working to pay for food to go to their neighbors and friends in need,” Ferguson said. That arrangement is part of the societal agreement “to help our families, our friends, and our neighbors when they are in need,” he said.

“And we have this deal on the basis of trust among each other,” he said.

Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, who heads the Justice Department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division, said: “There is no program too noble for a fraudster. They will take whatever they can, no matter the financial cost and no matter the human toll.”

He highlighted some individual cases that show “the scope of deception, greed, and exploitation we are confronting.”

For example, in the Southern District of Ohio, the local U.S. attorney’s office obtained an indictment against two suspects who are accused of using food stores they owned “to generate thousands of fake food purchases, ultimately resulting in a loss of approximately $29.7 million to the United States.” The suspects were arrested in Chicago just before the news conference, McDonald said.