Nick Shirley—the right-wing creator whose YouTube investigation sparked the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota—claims that his most up-to-date video about alleged fraud in California was bolstered by information supplied by none aside from Edward Coristine, one of many first members of the so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) recognized on-line as “Huge Balls.”
Coristine, who joined DOGE at 19 years previous with no prior authorities expertise, was staffed throughout a number of businesses together with the Social Safety Administration (SSA) and the Small Enterprise Administration (SBA). Earlier than becoming a member of DOGE, Coristine labored at Elon Musk’s Neuralink for a number of months and based a startup recognized for hiring black hat hackers.
In an interview with Coristine revealed on Shirley’s YouTube channel on Thursday, Shirley claims that Coristine personally pulled information on Medicaid spending for companies based mostly in California as potential targets. Coristine nodded alongside, telling Shirley that the federal government should create extra alternatives to crowdsource fraud investigations.
The knowledge Coristine allegedly pulled for Shirley was from a dataset revealed by the DOGE staff on the Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS) in February. In a publish to X on the time, the HHS DOGE staff referred to it as “the biggest Medicaid dataset in division historical past.” The publish additionally claimed that the dataset might be used to “detect” large-scale fraud.
“After that, I went to California based mostly off that dataset you had helped me extract, and these fraudsters additionally weren’t even making an attempt to cover it,” Shirley informed Coristine in Thursday’s interview.
Coristine stated that by open-sourcing information on authorities spending, vigilante investigators like Shirley who’re “extra well-positioned” may uncover fraudulent funds. “You might be somebody who really went to the locations the place we have been spending all this cash and confronted the folks and received to know the reality. I feel we simply should create extra alternatives for that to occur. We’ve got to proceed to open supply information,” Coristine stated.
The intersection of the fitting’s favourite fraud influencer and one of the infamous DOGE engineers exemplifies the following evolution of DOGE and the Trump administration’s struggle towards “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Shirley’s movies have grow to be key items of proof for the Trump administration’s fraud and immigration crackdowns. When Shirley launched his December video claiming to have uncovered greater than $100 million in Somali-run childcare fraud in Minnesota, figures like vice chairman JD Vance shared it. A surge of immigration brokers have been then despatched to Minnesota, leading to mass arrests, detainments, and the deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Early of their YouTube video, Shirley and Coristine instantly tie fraud to immigrant communities and foreigners. “Numerous the cash is being stolen and siphoned in another country,” Coristine says, with out offering proof. “As soon as that cash is in a suitcase to Somalia, that’s by no means coming again,” Shirley replies.
Later within the video, Shirley and Coristine cite particular examples of “waste and fraud” recognized by DOGE, together with funding for a “Sesame Avenue fashion youngsters’s TV program in Iraq” and “tax coverage consulting in Liberia.” Each packages have been supported by the US Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID), which DOGE successfully shut down within the early months of 2025. Coristine additionally alleged that the SBA “did a horrible job,” significantly with loans throughout the peak of COVID, and that there have been “no checks in any respect on who’s receiving cash, not even essentially the most primary checks of like, if [a Social Security number] is actual.”
