A U.K. citizen named Stephen Paul Edmund Sutton ran a kickback scheme on a U.S.-funded power grid project in Pakistan. Between May and November 2015, he and a Pakistani citizen named Atif Hussain Gillani siphoned nearly $100,000 off the project, with Sutton personally pocketing at least $21,000 in kickbacks. Sutton was extradited on May 19, 2025. Gillani pleaded guilty on September 25, 2025, to conspiracy to commit theft concerning federal programs.
That was one case. One project. One country.
The Department of Government Efficiency shut its doors on July 4, 2026 — mission accomplished, Elon Musk's team had torn through the federal bureaucracy and flagged billions in waste. Three months later, the Trump administration is still finding fraud at USAID that nobody caught for years. As one senior administration official told Just The News: "Under President Trump's leadership, we are aggressively hunting those who steal from American taxpayers."
The Pakistan power grid wasn't an isolated incident. USAID's Office of Inspector General described it bluntly: the project was "rife with bribery and kickbacks," reflecting "the fraud, waste, and abuse in overseas spending." Falsified contracts. Forged signatures. Money that was supposed to build infrastructure in a developing country landing in private bank accounts instead.
Then there's Mali. An organization called Association Subaahi Gumo — an NGO funded with American tax dollars — was debarred after investigators found it used U.S. taxpayer funds "for their own enjoyment rather than pay their employees." That's a direct quote from a senior administration official. Payroll fraud at a charity we were bankrolling. The organization was handed a three-year debarment, barring it from federal contracts, grants, and any other government business.
Sutton and Gillani each received three-year debarments as well. The punishment for stealing nearly $100,000 in American taxpayer money meant for Pakistani infrastructure is that you can't do business with the U.S. government for 36 months.
The pattern is worth studying. DOGE came in, identified the structural rot, and recommended the cuts. The administration acted on those recommendations — USAID was effectively dismantled as a standalone agency. But the fraud cases that had been festering for years didn't disappear when DOGE packed up. They were still sitting in the pipeline, waiting for someone to actually prosecute them. The cleanup outlasted the team that found the mess.
Consider what that means about the scale. Musk's team spent months inside the federal apparatus, flagged the waste, and moved on. The Trump administration is still debarring organizations and extraditing foreign nationals over schemes that date back to 2015. These aren't new frauds. They're old ones that nobody in the previous administration bothered to chase.
The same agencies that told us every dollar of foreign aid was carefully monitored were running programs where a U.K. citizen could skim $21,000 in kickbacks off a power grid project and nobody noticed for a decade. The same oversight apparatus that assured Congress the money was well spent let an NGO in Mali use payroll funds as a personal slush fund.
DOGE dissolved on July 4. It's October 18. They're still mopping up.
