When Brett Blackman filmed himself in his mansion recording a music video wearing a solid gold necklace shaped like a dollar sign, it was all made possible because he succeeded in defrauding the federal government in a billion-dollar scheme involving false Medicare claims for prescriptions and doctors’ orders.

Brian Rowan bought several multi-million-dollar mansions, luxury watches, a couple of Ferrari sports cars, and a boat named “Butt Nekkid,” all courtesy of his $1.2 billion defrauding scheme against government health care programs, using bribes, sham sales invoices, and kickbacks.

Then there is the Russian-organized crime group of 11 individuals implicated in a nearly $1 billion white-collar crime spree dubbed by prosecutors as “Operation Gold Rush,” which consisted of fraudulent claims for medical supplies, especially urinary catheters, using stolen identities of thousands of elderly Americans and physicians.

Those three examples are drawn from 10 lowlighted by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) earlier this week as she named the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a recipient of her latest monthly “Squeal Award” for claiming “billionaires shouldn’t exist.” The Iowa Republican lawmaker has announced a new award every month since joining the Senate in 2015.

The “ten scammers collectively billed government programs for over $21 billion. More than $3.1 billion of those bogus charges were paid. The crooks spent the loot on million-dollar mansions, luxury vehicles, extravagant jewelry, and a beachside resort. They also laundered millions of dollars overseas to China and the Russian mob,” Ernst said.

“Klepto-currency is creating a new class of billionaire bandits,” Ernst said. “While Iowans are juggling rising health care costs, these criminals are building empires by stealing from government health care programs and using the proceeds to bankroll mansions, luxury cars, and lavish lifestyles. Fraudsters are literally putting the con in convertible. For too long, Washington focused on taxing the money earned by hard-working Americans while giving it away without even checking to see who is taking it. Enough is enough. Let’s put these scammers in the slammer!”

Ernst explained that DSA’s statement came after the group was “ignoring the government grift and graft that is making billionaires out of riffraff. In fact, the $500 billion the Democrats’ proposed ‘billionaire tax’ would bring in isn’t even enough to pay the total cost of the $523 billion the government gives away to fraudsters every year. When the socialists demand, ‘Medicare for All,’ apparently, they really mean it, even if that includes Russian mobsters and the FBI’s most wanted fraudsters,” said Ernst.

During a Senate floor speech delivered the day after she made public the 10 billionaire fraudsters, Ernst declared that “Scammers are stealing more than $1.4 billion from taxpayers every day. Yesterday, I released a list of con artists who each fraudulently billed government programs for ONE BILLION DOLLARS or more.”

“These billionaire bandits looted programs for the elderly, poor, disabled, and veterans to lavish themselves with million-dollar mansions, Rolex watches, expensive jewelry, and luxury cars,” she chronicled. “One fraudster brags, ‘I had everything. I had houses, I had cars, I had watches.’ He ripped off Medicare for over a decade before getting turned in, and says, ‘It’s just so easy. It’s unbelievable.’”

Ernst wants the Senate to approve her Protecting American Taxpayers Act, which includes numerous new tools for executive branch officials to attack waste, fraud, and corruption from a variety of new perspectives. One part of the proposal is the Stop Secret Spending Act that Congress approved earlier this year and President Donald Trump signed into law in September.

“According to the latest Gallup poll, nine out of 10 Americans say government corruption is widespread, that’s a record-high number,” she pointed out.

“I challenge you to find any other issue where Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree with each other more strongly,” Ernst continued in her floor speech. “We owe it to all Americans to stop the government grift. My Protecting American Taxpayers Act would do just that by stopping government agencies from handing out quick cash with no questions asked; triggering automatic investigations when there are sudden and suspicious spikes in payment claims; banning convicted fraudsters from receiving taxpayer dollars; taking back the money that was already stolen; and sending those darn scammers to the slammer.”

Ernst said enactment of her bill would result in at least $240 billion in savings for taxpayers. “That’s ‘billion’ with a B, folks. The choice is quite simple: Give the money to fraudsters or return it to taxpayers.”

But the Senate went into recess without acting on the Ernst proposal after Democrats, led by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, objected, claiming in a Senate floor speech that “Republicans in Congress have begun referring to any policy they don’t like as undeserving fraud.”