TIME magazine hasn’t yet announced its 2026 Person of the Year, but one conservative outlet has already put forward a nominee: The Fraudsters. In a September 23 commentary for American Thinker, James Zumwalt argues that the individuals who siphoned money from programs meant for the needy have shaped the year more than any politician, athlete, or world leader.
TIME’s own criterion, Zumwalt notes, is “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.” That description has historically covered a wide range. Past covers have honored popes and brutal dictators alike, while 2014’s “Ebola Fighters” showed the title could go to a group rather than a single figure — and 1982’s “Machine of the Year” proved a non-human could take the honor. Against that backdrop, Zumwalt writes, a collective of fraudsters is not as strange a pick as it might sound.
The Minnesota case at the center
The article’s most detailed example is the Feeding Our Future scheme in Minnesota, which prosecutors have described as the state’s largest pandemic-era fraud case. According to Zumwalt, roughly $250 million was diverted from a federal program meant to feed children during COVID-19. Aimee Bock, who ran the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, was the mastermind, signing up restaurants and caterers to receive taxpayer money for meals. Prosecutors charged at least 78 defendants, the vast majority of them East African or Somali. In the end, 60 have pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, Bock among them — found guilty of billing millions for meals never delivered and of taking bribes.
The numbers cited by the article illustrate how quickly the operation scaled: Bock’s nonprofit went from about $3.4 million in claims in 2019 to $200 million in 2021, a two-year surge that federal investigators ultimately flagged. Bock has maintained her innocence, Zumwalt adds, claiming that local officials, including Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, visited the meal sites. The piece notes that independent journalist Nick Shirley was responsible for uncovering much of the fraud.
Still, Zumwalt is careful to say the Somali community in Minnesota is only one piece of a broader problem. He argues the pattern extends far beyond one state or one program.
A bigger pattern, or a familiar one?
From there, the commentary surveys a range of other cases. More than 208 investigations are reportedly open into possible fraud at USAID, touching on billions of dollars, with some cases involving foreign aid allegedly diverted to terrorist groups. In Medicare, the article points to phantom labs, fabricated test orders, and inflated billing codes that produced an estimated $1.6 billion in fraudulent invoices — one company alone, operating fourteen fake labs, allegedly pulled in $24 million. The Trump administration has moved to block those payments and terminate 157 providers, according to the piece.
Politicians get their own section. Massachusetts State Representative Francisco Paulino has been indicted on federal charges alleging COVID-era relief fraud that netted more than $700,000, per the article. Lawrence, Massachusetts Mayor Brian DePena was arrested on allegations of using $1.5 million in federal funds as a slush fund. New York City Public Advocate Angela Aquino pleaded guilty to wire fraud over an attempt to obtain roughly $1 million through the city’s matching funds program. In each case, the piece presents the allegations without additional sourcing beyond the author’s summary.
The article also lists bank fraud (Newport Beach financier Mahender Makhijani allegedly falsified title records to pull nearly $100 million out of a federally-insured bank, spending much of it on jets, supercars, and parties) and two owners of largely vacant adult daycare centers in Flushing, Queens, who billed Medicaid $32 million since 2018 while donating to Democrats, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Zumwalt even notes that the daughter of Bill Gates has been exposed in a fraud scheme, accused of claiming sales her startup hadn’t made to inflate commissions.
Woven through the list is a political argument. Zumwalt contends that Democrats have shown little interest in promoting such investigations, and he criticizes California for making undercover exposure of fraud a state crime. He also credits Vice President J.D. Vance, who oversees the Trump administration’s fraud task force, with reporting that more than $230 billion in fraud has been uncovered since the president took office, and with identifying what he called a “clear pattern” among migrant communities committing federal fraud. Zumwalt contrasts Vance’s activity with the Biden-era border czar, whom he accuses of doing nothing to earn the title.
An ‘iceberg,’ and an argument
Zumwalt concedes that fraud will never be eliminated. Human greed, he writes, will always be present, denying help to those who need it most. What matters, in his view, is making fraudsters pay a steep price — and the attention that comes with a TIME cover would serve that purpose. The piece ends with a nod to the importance of free speech and a pitch for reader donations.
TIME’s editors will make their own choice in the coming months, and their track record suggests they aren’t easily predictable. But as an argument, the nomination works on its own terms: if the criterion is impact on the year’s news, there is no shortage of candidates whose actions generated headlines and hurt the people the money was meant to help. Whether that case is persuasive is another matter — but that’s what opinion pages are for.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/09/an-argument-for-time-s-2026-person-of-the-year/