In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump announced a “war on fraud,” a term that the administration has used in increasingly broad and deceptive ways.
The president made the declaration after referencing a welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota that was uncovered and prosecuted by the Biden administration.
Trump and his Republican allies have used the scandal as justification to swarm the North Star State with immigration officials, to attack the state’s large Somali community and to allege rampant corruption in Democrat-led states in general.
“I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance,” Trump said during his address. “If we’re able to find enough fraud, we’ll actually have a balanced budget overnight.”
While Trump’s statement was not particularly detailed, it builds on a murky story that — at least…
Identity theft is the “foundational” fraud upon which many other crimes are built. It involves the unauthorized acquisition and use of a person’s personal identifying information (PII), such as an ID number, Social Security number, or passport details.
- How it works: Fraudsters obtain PII through data breaches, mail theft, or “social engineering” (tricking people into revealing details). Once they have this data, they can open new bank accounts, apply for credit cards or loans, and even receive medical treatment under your name.
- Synthetic Identity Fraud: A sophisticated variation where criminals combine real and fabricated information to create a completely new, “synthetic” person. This is particularly difficult to detect because there is no single victim to report the suspicious activity initially.