A jaw-dropping report from 60 Minutes has confirmed one of the Trump administration’s most explosive claims: that nearly $1 trillion in federal funds was lost to fraud, much of it stemming from pandemic relief programs. The CBS segment, which aired Sunday, revealed that cyber criminals—many tied to foreign regimes like China and Russia—used stolen American identities on a massive scale to defraud government programs.

Bryan Vorndran, head of the FBI’s cyber division, told CBS’s Cecilia Vega that the Social Security numbers and personal data of “just about every single American” are now available for sale on the dark web. “That is a true statement,” he said. “All of our personally identifiable information… is available on the dark net and can likely be purchased.”

Vorndran’s statement came as part of an in-depth investigation corroborating the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump-era watchdog headed by Elon Musk. DOGE has drawn praise and criticism alike for exposing what it calls rampant corruption and “zombie” spending inside federal agencies.

Fraud expert Linda Miller, a former senior advisor at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, told CBS she welcomed Musk’s push to expose the fraud problem. “To be honest, Elon Musk coming out and saying, ‘There is a huge amount of fraud,’ I welcome that message completely,” she said. “Finally, someone is actually saying this.”

According to Miller, the scale of fraud has grown so large it now rivals the annual defense budget. “We’re talking about organized crime rings,” she said. “We’re talking about using vast amounts of stolen Americans’ identities to monetize them for criminal activity.”

The report highlighted how foreign actors monitor U.S. disaster zones and quickly purchase identities from those zip codes to apply for emergency grants and loans. One 2024 case alone resulted in a $6 billion theft, showing how fraudsters exploited the chaos of COVID-era relief programs.

In total, Miller estimated that between $550 billion and $750 billion is stolen each year from federal coffers—and that total could soon cross the trillion-dollar mark.

The 60 Minutes report marks a rare moment of alignment between mainstream media and the Trump administration’s claims. President Trump, who created DOGE to root out waste and fraud across government, has often railed against the federal bureaucracy’s failure to prevent abuse of taxpayer dollars. During a recent address to Congress, Trump listed dozens of programs flagged by DOGE, including millions spent on diversity initiatives overseas, gender activism in Guatemala, and foreign “Sesame Street” productions.

While Miller largely supported DOGE’s mission, she cautioned that not all questionable spending qualifies as fraud. “You may not agree with what USAID does… you may think that’s the wrong thing to be spending money on, but that’s not fraud,” she said. “Fraud involves willful deception. And it has to be proven in a court of law.”

Still, she acknowledged that DOGE’s broader focus on efficiency and accountability is long overdue.

The revelations are fueling calls from Trump allies in Congress to pass new legislation requiring more aggressive fraud-prevention measures, including biometric verification for federal aid programs and tighter controls over tax-funded digital systems.

With America’s personal data exposed and taxpayer funds looted on a historic scale, Trump officials are pressing for the harshest crackdown yet. Vice President JD Vance has already proposed a new “Digital Identity Protection Act” and warned that federal bureaucrats who turned a blind eye to COVID-era fraud will be held accountable.

As for DOGE, the agency says it’s just getting started. “We didn’t need CBS to confirm what we already knew,” one senior official told The Blaze. “But we’ll take all the help we can get. The era of unaccountable government is over.”