GHOST VOTERS, FAKE IDENTITIES & A BILLION-DOLLAR SCANDAL: WHY ILLINOIS MUST WAKE UP

Illinois Politics| Voting Rights| Business and Economy | Featured

December 06, 2025•10 min read

**“How Many Ghost Voters Does It Take to Steal a State?”

Why Illinois’ Secret Voter Rolls — and Obamacare Fraud — Should Terrify Every Taxpayer**

By Staff Writer
December 6, 2025

If the government can’t even stop fake people from getting Obamacare subsidies…
If it allows shell nonprofits to steal a billion dollars meant for hungry kids…
If it refuses to show you who is registered to vote…

Why would you trust that your vote in Illinois really counts?

This is not three scandals.
It’s one long chain — a pattern.

Obamacare’s fraud gates blown wide open.
A billion-dollar welfare heist in Minnesota.
A national fight over dirty voter rolls — with Illinois digging in at every turn.

The pattern is unmistakable:
A system that works perfectly for bureaucrats, insiders, and political machines —
and disastrously for the people footing the bill.

Illinois residents have every reason to care.
Because the deeper these investigations go, the clearer the answer becomes:

Sloppiness isn’t an accident.
It’s a strategy.

I. Obamacare Fraud: How Fake Identities Broke the System — and Why Democrats Shut Down the Government to Protect It

The Affordable Care Act’s massive subsidy program is supposed to be tightly controlled.
But the GAO — the federal government’s own watchdog — blew a crater-sized hole in that narrative.

They didn’t hack the system.
They didn’t use stolen identities.

They simply made up people.

Fake names.
Fake Social Security numbers.
Fake income.
Fake documents.

And almost every single one was approved.

The numbers are staggering:

GAO created 24 fake applicants during plan years 2024 and 2025.
22 out of 24 were approved for coverage.
Many were approved without proving citizenship, SSNs, or income.
Some fake enrollees received more than $10,000 per month in federal subsidies combined.
One single Social Security number was used across 71 years of subsidized coverage spread over 125+ plans.
GAO matched death records and found over 58,000 dead individuals tied to ACA tax credits.

This wasn’t random error.
This was system-wide rot.

Republicans called it what it is:

“Tens of billions of tax dollars funneled to insurers through identity fraud.”
— Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), House Ways and Means Chair

Democrats responded differently:

They shut down the government.

Last month, Democrats forced a shutdown to protect the very subsidy structure now proven to be riddled with fraud.
They rejected Republican attempts to tighten identity verification and documentation checks.

Now they’re threatening another shutdown in January unless the flawed subsidy expansion is extended again — without reform.

This raises a blunt question Illinois citizens deserve answered:

Are Democrats afraid of fixing the fraud…
or afraid of losing the political power the fraud helps generate?

II. Minnesota’s Billion-Dollar Welfare Heist: How Political Fear and Bureaucratic Cowardice Enabled the Largest Welfare Fraud in U.S. History

If Obamacare shows what happens when federal oversight fails, Minnesota shows what happens when state oversight collapses.

“Feeding Our Future” is now one of the most shocking welfare scandals ever uncovered.

The mechanics were simple:

Create nonprofits claiming to feed thousands of kids
Exploit pandemic-era relaxed rules
File bogus reimbursement claims
Cash the checks
Buy mansions, luxury cars, jewelry, and vacations

To date:

Nearly 80 people have been indicted
Over 50 convicted or pleaded guilty
Fraud estimates approach $1 billion

And the center of the scheme?

Minnesota’s 5th District — represented by Ilhan Omar.

The state leadership failure

This scandal unfolded under:

Gov. Tim Walz (D)
Attorney General Keith Ellison (D)
Minnesota’s Department of Education (MDE)

MDE flagged Feeding Our Future in 2020 for “serious deficiencies,” including suspicious growth and incomplete audits.

And what happened?

The state kept paying.
Officials hesitated to intervene.
Bureaucrats admitted they feared being called “racist” if they questioned organizations tied to Somali immigrant networks.
Enforcement actions were delayed for months.

A former Minnesota legislator put it bluntly:

“Raise concerns and you get handed the racism card. Bureaucrats were shamed into silence.”

Now, a U.S. House committee and the Treasury Department are investigating whether Gov. Walz’s administration ignored clear red flags.

III. Ilhan Omar: No Indictment — but Deep Ties, Troubling Questions, and a Rapid Rise Worth Scrutiny

It is important to state clearly:
Ilhan Omar has not been charged with any crime.

But the connections around her are impossible to ignore.

Omar held her 2018 victory party at Safari Restaurant, later exposed as a fraud hub.
Co-owner Salim Ahmed Said was convicted of stealing over $12 million.
Omar introduced the MEALS Act, which loosened oversight and enabled nonprofits — including fraudulent ones — to claim reimbursement more easily during the pandemic.
Omar’s deputy district director Ali Isse defended Feeding Our Future publicly and attacked state regulators as racist.
Campaign worker Guhaad Hashi Said pleaded guilty to running a fake meal-distribution site and stealing millions.
Omar accepted donations from multiple individuals later indicted in the scandal (she returned them after indictments).

A policy expert summarized the skepticism:

“She had been in the facility multiple times. Either she’s terminally naïve or she knew and didn’t care.”

And then there’s Omar’s wealth

Omar arrived as a refugee with nothing.
She now reports a net worth that places her among the wealthiest members of the House, with multiple high-income revenue streams from:

book deals
speaking contracts
national fundraising networks
political organizations
consulting relationships

Nothing illegal has been alleged about her personal finances — but the optics matter:

How did a politician representing the district where the fraud flourished become one of its most financially successful public figures?

Combined with her staff’s involvement and political proximity to the fraud ecosystem, the questions are not unreasonable.

And they matter because the same types of networks involved in the Minnesota scandal are also powerful in voter mobilization efforts.

Which brings us to the core of why Illinois voters must pay attention.

IV. The Voter Roll Crackdown: DOJ Says Blue States Are Keeping “Dirty” Lists on Purpose

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon is clear:

“The sloppiness in blue-state elections is on purpose. It is a feature, not a bug.”

Under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), states must:

keep voter rolls accurate,
remove dead and ineligible voters,
and make their statewide lists available for public inspection.

But blue states aren’t doing that.

DOJ has now:

sued 14 states for refusing to provide voter rolls or clean them properly
demanded cleanup actions in more than 26 states
entered a consent decree with North Carolina to correct 100,000+ improper registrations

Dhillon says they’ve found:

people registered in multiple states
dead voters still on active lists
individuals registered three, four, or even five times
non-citizens appearing on the rolls in several states

Democrats say this is a “voter suppression strategy.”

Republicans say it’s basic hygiene.

Given the fraud happening elsewhere in federal programs, the question writes itself:

If fake identities can siphon billions from health and welfare programs,
why wouldn’t they be able to vote?

And that leads us directly to Illinois.

V. Illinois: A State Fighting Oversight at Every Turn — SNAP, Voter Rolls, and the Pritzker Blockade

Illinois is now a central player in the national integrity showdown.

1. Voter Rolls Under Federal Pressure

Judicial Watch and Illinois groups sued the Illinois State Board of Elections (ISBE) for:

failing to properly clean voter rolls
refusing to make list-maintenance records available

The Trump Justice Department took the unusual step of filing a statement of interest, supporting the plaintiffs and telling the court that:

Illinois must clean its rolls effectively
Illinois must furnish voter data for inspection

Illinois election officials are resisting, delaying, and attempting to narrow what must legally be disclosed.

Why the secrecy?
If the rolls are clean, why fight so hard to hide them?

2. SNAP Fraud and Data Blockades

While voter-roll concerns build, Illinois is simultaneously battling the USDA over SNAP welfare data.

The USDA created a new integrity unit and ordered states to submit more detailed data to detect fraud and trafficking.

Illinois refused.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul claims it violates privacy rules.

But consider this:

Illinois families have lost tens of millions to EBT skimming schemes in just two years
Illinois has one of the highest SNAP error rates in America
the state faces potential federal penalties over $700 million if it doesn't fix the issues

In other words:

Illinois can’t protect SNAP recipients — and doesn’t want the feds to see the data proving it.

Is it incompetence?
Is it political calculation?
Or is it fear of what the numbers will expose?

VI. Why Illinoisans Should Care: Fraud Doesn’t Happen in Silos — It’s a Pattern

These cases share the same DNA:

massive government systems
weak oversight
political pressure to keep money flowing
accusations of racism whenever scrutiny arises
ballooning rolls — whether of beneficiaries or voters
reluctance to share data
fierce resistance when federal agencies demand transparency

This is not coincidence.
It is a method.

Programs that are sloppy are easier to exploit.
Rolls that are bloated are easier to mobilize.
Systems that lack verification are easier to manipulate.

Which brings us to the final point.

VII. The Pattern, the Voter Rolls — and Why Trump Is the Target

When you zoom out, everything connects:

Obamacare: Fraud allowed to flourish; Democrats shut down the government to keep the structure intact.
Minnesota: A billion-dollar fraud ignored until the FBI intervened; officials scared of racial backlash.
Omar: No charges, but surrounded by individuals and networks involved in the scam.
Illinois: Voter-roll secrecy, SNAP data stonewalling, and high fraud rates ignored by leadership.
Blue-state resistance: DOJ lawsuits, refusals to turn over records, battles over transparency.

And then there's Donald Trump.

Trump is not a career politician.
He is already wealthy, already famous, already battle-scarred.

He ran on — and governs on — a simple, dangerous promise:

Drain the swamp.

Not tweak it.
Not audit it.
Drain it.

For the people who benefit from:

loose oversight,
endless subsidy pipelines,
sloppy records,
bloated voter rolls,
and weaponized accusations of racism…

Trump is not just a political opponent.
He is a direct threat to their business model.

Exposing fraud gains him nothing — except more enemies.
But for Illinois citizens, it could mean:

a cleaner government,
secure elections,
and programs that actually help the needy instead of crooks and political operatives.

Which is why the attacks on him grow louder — the swamp is fighting for its life.

SOURCES

Obamacare Fraud / GAO Findings

Government Accountability Office (GAO) preliminary and historical test reports on ACA marketplace fraud
U.S. House Ways and Means Committee statements
Statements by Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO)
Coverage from The New York Post, Politico, AP, and Axios