Team Trumps vast war on fraud should pay dividends for decades to come

Here’s one war that should’ve started years ago: Team Trump’s drive to stamp out fraud is still ramping up, but is already saving the public billions.This week alone, federal, state and local authorities conducted a string of fresh raids and made arrests, including in New York and California, as part of a nationwide crackdown on Medicaid fraud.Homeland Security also launched a massive operation to snare illegal immigrants who fraudulently stole $40 million in food stamps, bringing the total in food-stamp fraud ID’d so far to $641 million.The feds have also destroyed more than 2,200 illegal merchant SNAP devices and disabled more than 2,000 retailer authorization numbers, heading off an estimated $5 billion in potential fraudulent transactions, Fox New reported.Meanwhile, Tuesday’s sweep in Gotham alone saw more than 80 adult-day-care centers hit in Brooklyn and Queens.And in Staten Island, prosecutors arrested two operators for $530,000 in billings for hundreds of phantom seniors.

 All this follows the epic fraud scheme uncovered last year in Minnesota, where billions are said to have vanished.One day-care center there alone, made famous by its misspelled name, the “Quality Learing Center,” was caught collecting millions for nonexistent kids.Last month, a LexisNexis Risk Solutions study put the true cost of food-stamp fraud — including the costs of uncovering it — at more than four times the amount of the theft itself.The company’s Haywood Talcove says such fraud is now running at “a trillion dollars a year.” Ouch.Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Please provide a valid email.

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The people stealing the funds, he warns, are “real criminal groups doing real damage to our democracy.”One key problem: While Washington picks up much of the tab for welfare programs, states administer them ...