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Vice President JD Vance Delivers Remarks in Bangor, Maine, May 14, 2026

May 14, 2026 · The White House · 0:56:19

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Vice President JD Vance headlined an anti-fraud event in Bangor, Maine, on May 14, 2026, introduced by Keith Sonderling of the Department of Labor, who serves on the Vice President’s task force to eliminate fraud. Sonderling’s indictment of the pandemic unemployment-insurance system, as he stated it: $888 billion in benefits were paid, and “it’s estimated as much as $135 billion of that may have been stolen through fraud.” His particulars: “nearly $29 billion went to the same social security numbers across multiple states”; “$139 million got sent to dead people”; “$1 billion was sent to children under the age of 14 seeking unemployment insurance”; and “as much as $17 billion in fraud may have gone out in a single month.”

For Maine specifically, he stated that more than $93 million in overpayments were put on the books and barely $7 million has been recovered. The Department of Labor’s response, as he described it: strengthened identity systems, artificial-intelligence screening, strike teams in states including California, and close work with the department’s inspector general — under the principle that “paying benefits first and verifying later never works. We must prevent fraud before it happens.” The Vice President then delivered the event’s main remarks on the task force’s work.

Why it matters

Bangor is where the Labor Department’s fraud numbers entered the task force record in their fullest stated form — the $135 billion estimate and its component figures, with a state-level case (Maine’s $93 million) attached. Those figures anchor the Fraud hub’s unemployment-insurance thread and are the baseline the task force’s recovery claims are measured against.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: the UI-fraud figures as stated by Sonderling ($888 billion paid; up to $135 billion stolen; $29 billion duplicate-SSN payments; $93 million in Maine overpayments against ~$7 million recovered), checkable against Labor Department and GAO reporting.

Sources: The White House, “Vice President JD Vance Delivers Remarks in Bangor, Maine,” Bangor, ME, May 14, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by Keith Sonderling and Vice President Vance at the event.