Trump Offers Snitches 1% Of The Fraud They Report, From A $25 Million Pot, With Himself As Judge
President Trump announced Tuesday from the Oval Office that the federal government will pay whistleblowers who report people defrauding taxpayers, and that he will decide who gets paid. "I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions," he said, with Vice President JD Vance, who leads the administration's fraud task force, at his side.
Trump said informants would get 1% of the fraud they report, even if it reached $100 billion, and be paid "immediately." The program's own website says successful whistleblowers get up to $30,000, depending on whether the tip leads to criminal charges. Asked about the gap, Trump told CBS there is no limit and no charges are required.
The size of the fund points the other way. MPR News reported that Trump called it a $25 million program, to be run by the Justice Department. At 1%, $25 million is used up by $2.5 billion of reported fraud, so the $100 billion case Trump described would owe a payout forty times the pot. Tips are encrypted and go to the Treasury Department, and CBS said it is unclear who reviews them. Trump added that he would personally settle cases where more than one person claims credit for the same tip.
President Trump announced a new federal fraud whistleblower incentive program that he says will pay Americans, including journalists, a 1% commission for reporting fraud and corruption involving taxpayer dollars. "If you turn somebody in and you, let's say, report, and you find $1 billion, we are giving a commission to that person of 1%. It's a lot of money," Trump said.
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 20, 2026
The first check went to Nick Shirley, the YouTuber whose Dec. 26 video on Minnesota child-care centers helped set off the administration's Minnesota fraud push. Vance handed him $10,000 in the Oval Office. MPR noted that several allegations in the video were unsubstantiated. Minnesota's children's services commissioner said at the time that every day care featured had received unannounced visits in the prior six months and that the state found no evidence of fraud, per CNN's reporting. Federal law enforcement had not corroborated the video's claims. ZH covered the aftermath when Shirley said he had hired round-the-clock security.
The real Minnesota cases are separate and large. Since late 2022, federal prosecutors there have charged more than 100 people with defrauding government social service programs, including Medicaid, MPR reported. The Feeding Our Future case, a $300 million scheme, was central to that wave. Trump blamed DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz for the fraud, and said Shirley's work threatened the "radical left's effort" to change America.
Whistleblower pay already exists, and the administration says it is not enough. Vance said 99% of the fraud the administration is finding falls outside the False Claims Act, whose strict requirements govern its rewards, which CBS put at 25% to 30% of recovered proceeds; the statute's range is 15% to 30%. In fiscal 2025, DOJ recovered more than $6.8 billion under the act, including over $5.3 billion from 1,297 new qui tam suits, a record. Relators were paid about $330 million, just over 6% of qui tam recoveries.
Treasury also opened its own track in the spring. In early April, Bessent announced a program run by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that offers 10% to 30% of recovered funds for tips on Medicare and Medicaid fraud, misuse of relief money, sanctions violations and Bank Secrecy Act breaches. Bessent has said the department had topped 700 tips. Trump's 1% is a tenth of the 10% floor Treasury already advertises.
Critics doubt the motive. Naomi Seligman, president of Whistleblower Aid, told CBS she thinks the president is more interested in hunting down whistleblowers than protecting them, and urged him to first look at violations inside his own administration. In Minnesota, House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a Republican candidate for governor who had praised Shirley's video, said Tuesday she has never met or spoken with him and plans to sign an executive order strengthening whistleblower protections.
As we noted earlier this month, US taxpayers are losing up to $500 billion annually due to fraud.