Dr. Oz: Cuban Migrants Escape to Havana with Millions in Stolen Medicare Cash

Cuban migrants are ripping off American taxpayers via Medicare fraud and then fleeing back to Cuba with the cash, a top administration official told Fox News.

“This fraud is weaponized … often by foreign nationals,” said Mehmet Oz, also known as Dr. Oz, who runs President Donald Trump’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). “We can’t allow it to continue,” he said as he described how migrants steal government funds intended to supply medical devices, such as wheelchairs, to sick Americans.

Oz said that CMS has put a six-month “nationwide moratorium” on the approval of “new durable medical equipment” businesses in the U.S. He explained that in some of the fraud cases, many from businesses owned by Cuban nationals, the suppliers are not providing equipment, such as government-funded wheelchairs and canes, but are instead stealing Americans’ beneficiary numbers and creating fake businesses to embezzle taxpayer funds.

He said:

We announced a nationwide moratorium in this country for six months. You may not start a new durable medical equipment business. They’re the ones who sell wheelchairs and canes, and we have enough to serve the American people … you’re not even providing equipment. You’re stealing their beneficiary number. You’re pretending — headfake! — to ship stuff, you never ship any goods. You have no payroll. No one works for you. You never sell any products to anybody. You literally create a fake business.

Many of these businesses are owned by Cuban nationals, by the way. They bill falsely for $5 million for a month of fake stuff. They flee back to Cuba. We try to go after the money. It’s already gone. It’s been shipped overseas, and everyone’s looking around to see who’s the last guy standing.

“This fraud is weaponized … we can’t allow it to continue,” he said.

Oz’s use of the term “weaponized” suggests that the taxpayer fraud is orchestrated by Cuba’s dictatorial government.

Oz has already spotlighted the Democrat-backed, Somali-run fraud in Minnesota, and the long-standing Medicare fraud by commingled Armenian and Russian gangs in California.

This week, Trump announced that Vice President JD Vance will lead a “war on fraud.”

Vance told Fox News:

How many illegal aliens are on Medicaid? We know that it’s billions and billions of dollars that should go to American citizens. It’s going to illegal aliens. How many fraudulent daycare centers have been set up where that money should go to American citizens to help their kids get into childcare? Instead, it’s being stolen from them by illegal aliens in our country…

There’s a whole host of tools that we have that have never been used, and the president and I talked about this a couple of months ago and said, ‘What if we just did everything that we could to stop the fraud that’s being committed against the American taxpayer?’ The president said, ‘Great idea, let’s do it,’ and we’re going to work on that very aggressively over the next year.”

WATCH — Trump Taps JD Vance to Lead WAR on Somali Fraud in Minnesota:

In general, easy migration rules encourage foreign criminals to prey on Americans via white-collar crime.

The resulting archipelago of criminal-migrant enclaves exists in many business sectors and many localities.

For example, millions of college-graduate Americans have seen their white-collar jobs being sold by Indian and U.S. executives in exchange for kickbacks from Indian migrants. A huge number of Indian-origin Sikhs and Eastern Europeans work illegally as dangerous truck drivers, and many Chinese migrants work in the U.S. narcotics economy.

In January, City-Journal posted an interview with a detective who described how migrants are stealing from Americans and government agencies along the West Coast:

The two most common I investigate are credit-card fraud and elder fraud. I noticed that in cases involving a high dollar amount—$1,000 or more—and that target a stranger, it’s almost always perpetrated by foreigners. A typical organized-crime credit-card crew would be from Romania. They will come to the United States by sneaking over the Mexican border and go up and down the I-5 corridor. They steal credit cards out of gym lockers at fitness clubs.

They’re very sophisticated. They have a computer and a printer in their car. They will steal your credit card, and if your phone’s there, they will steal the SIM card. Once they get to their car, they will immediately make a fake ID that matches those credentials. Then, they’ll go downtown to a jewelry store and buy a Rolex watch for $40,000. If the bank sends you an alert asking if you made the purchase, the thieves have your SIM card and your ID, so they reply, “Yes.” Eventually we’ll catch up with them, but then they just go elsewhere. They’ll start out in Los Angeles, then go up to Salem, then Portland, then Vancouver, Olympia, and Seattle.

Though they involve large sums of money, these are nonviolent crimes, so the justice system doesn’t take them that seriously. Eventually these criminals will get caught, but they are not extraditable out of state, and we’re not allowed to call immigration. They’ll have Romanian passports, but nobody ever picks up the phone and calls ICE because it’s against the law in blue states to call them. They do a few months’ time and then are out again.

The criminals include Romanians, Nigerians, and South Americans, the detective said:

Something like one-third of the wealth in the globe is in the United States, and we’re just a hair over 4 percent of the population, so it only makes sense for criminal groups to focus on America. Additionally, in blue states, it’s a taboo to focus on immigrant communities. Politicians have passed “sanctuary state” laws and reduced criminal penalties, which, in effect, are advertisements saying, “We’re open for business for fraudsters. You probably won’t get caught. If you do get caught, you probably won’t get convicted. If you do get convicted, you won’t get that much time. And you never have to worry about getting kicked out the country.”

“In my experience, nearly 100 percent of high-dollar, stranger-on-stranger frauds are committed by foreigners,” he said. “I cannot think of one case of mine where a native-born American committed a fraud of over $1,000 against a stranger. Not in my entire career.”

Many Indian and Chinese migrants — including many with F-1 student visas — are being arrested for helping Indian and Chinese criminals to scam many elderly Americans.

Meanwhile, business-backed pro-migration groups such as the Cato Institute insist that migrants have lower crime rates than Americans — as if the imported migrant criminals somehow reduce the actual number of crimes against Americans.

Businesses favor large-scale migration because it provides the investors and CEOs with additional profits via cheaper workers, government-subsidized consumers, and apartment-sharing renters. The myriad costs of the migration, however, are imposed on ordinary Americans.

The massive scale of fraud by migrants is being spotlighted by Trump in the run-up to the 2026 election.

“The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” Trump told the crowd of cheering Republicans and sullen Democrats during his 2026 State of the Union speech. He added:

Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here, to the USA — and it is the American people who pay the price, in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly, crime.

“The corruption … is plundering America,” Trump said, adding:

There’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. We have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that. And California, Massachusetts, Maine, and many other states are even worse.

This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe. So tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance.

“We will take care of this problem, we’re going to take care of this problem,” Trump said.