California Fraud

Last December, the auditor reported that EDD’s UI program—which remains on the auditor’s “High Risk” list—had a fraud rate of 7.6 percent in 2023 and 7.9 percent in 2024. Applied to the state’s UI spending, those figures suggest more than $1 billion in stolen taxpayer funds since the pandemic. “EDD continues to have high rates of improper UI payments, including fraudulent payments,” the auditor wrote. “These inadequacies have resulted in a substantial risk of serious detriment to the State and its residents.”

While many states dealt with UI scams during the pandemic, California stands in a class of its own. At best, the EDD’s performance amounted to mass government incompetence; at worst, it reflects total indifference to fraud.

“This happens in every single state,” Talcove concluded, “but it happens a lot more in California.”

Total budgeted Medi-Cal spending—which includes federal, state, and local contributions—has more than doubled on the governor’s watch, rising from $93.5 billion the year before he took office to $196.7 billion in the current annual budget. During the same period, California’s resident population declined by 0.2 percent.

Experts have long warned of Medi-Cal’s vulnerabilities to fraud. The state auditor first designated “Medi-Cal Eligibility” as a “high-risk” issue in 2007 and has applied that label to it ever since. But the state government has made little progress in addressing what the auditor calls “eligibility discrepancies” that present a “substantial risk of serious financial detriment to the State.” California’s attorney general has conceded that “Medi-Cal fraud could reach billions of dollars annually.”

In some cases, prosecutors say, that is precisely what happened. In one instance, Paul Richard Randall, Kyrollos Mekail, and Patricia Anderson allegedly “took advantage” of Medi-Cal’s loosened restrictions as part of a scheme that defrauded taxpayers of more than $178 million. The conspirators allegedly used a business called Monte Vista Pharmacy to process fraudulent prescriptions; Randall and others allegedly laundered the proceeds through third parties to fund kickbacks to Anderson and obscure the operation from law enforcement, according to a 2025 Department of Justice press release. Mekail had pleaded guilty to criminal charges in August 2024, and Randall is reportedly expected to do the same this year.

@ABooksNightmare

 somehow our government doesn't know

They know...because a lot of them are in on it. 

For many California watchers, the 2024 audit came years too late. In 2020,?Representative Kevin Kiley, then serving in the California State Assembly, requested a similar report, he told?City Journal, but state legislative Democrats rejected the proposal after Newsom?intervened. “I brought the proposal to the state’s joint legislative audit committee, and it fell one vote short of approval after the administration came and testified against doing the audit,” Kiley said. “They likely knew what the audit would show and didn’t want taxpayers to get that window into how their money is, quite frankly, being squandered.”

Officials have also raised concerns about fraud in California’s SNAP benefits, officially known as CalFresh and more commonly called food stamps. As of last year, the state auditor had designated CalFresh as a “high risk” program. Annual state spending on food stamps has risen from roughly $8 billion in 2015 to nearly $16 billion under Newsom.

That expansion coincided with several fraud cases. In 2023, 15 people associated with a Romanian criminal ring were arrested for allegedly stealing CalFresh and other welfare funding, at least one of whom later pleaded guilty. The following year, seven people were charged for allegedly making “fraudulent cash withdrawals” as part of a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar theft of welfare benefits. In March, more than 50 people were charged as part of “a yearslong crackdown on organized theft rings” that included “many with ties to Romania.” The defendants allegedly stole millions in public funds by exploiting California’s Electronic Benefit Transfer system, which distributes benefits for programs like CalFresh.

Notwithstanding this steady drumbeat of fraud cases, at least one California Democratic lawmaker is pushing to lower penalties for those who steal from state welfare programs. In April 2025, State Senator?Lola Smallwood-Cuevas?sponsored a bill that would raise the threshold for felony welfare fraud from $950 to $25,000. The measure would also make it more difficult to charge perjury based on misstatements to county welfare departments. Republican State Assemblyman Carl DeMaio has said that if the bill becomes law, it will effectively “legalize welfare fraud” in California.

Federal prosecutors, however, are stepping up enforcement. Last year,?Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, announced the creation of a federal task force to combat fraud and corruption in the state’s homelessness programs. The task force has already brought charges in several multimillion-dollar homelessness-fraud cases—and Essayli has vowed that more are coming. “California has spent $24 billion in the last five years on homelessness, and no one can account for where that money has really gone,” Essayli said in January. Gavin Newsom, he added, is the “king of fraud.”

The culture of fraud in California is so pervasive that it has allegedly reached the governor’s own office. Between 2022 and December 2024,?Newsom’s chief of staff was?Dana Williamson. In November 2025, she was charged with fraud for allegedly “siphoning campaign and COVID-19 recovery funds into her and an associate’s pockets.” Two other “well-connected aides in state politics were also charged” and struck plea deals that reportedly confirmed the scheme’s existence.

Newsom’s office said they were made aware of an investigation into Williamson in late 2024 and immediately moved to place her on leave. When she officially left the governor’s office a month later, though, Newsom’s send-off message applauded her “insight, tenacity, and big heart,” while making no mention of the investigation against her. And even with the charges against her, Williamson walked away from government with a $50,000 payout for unused vacation time.

Williamson, who has pleaded not guilty, is not the only state official to be charged with fraud during the Newsom administration. In January, Phyllis Hope Stitt, a former EDD employee responsible for determining UI claimant eligibility during the pandemic, pleaded guilty to defrauding the program of more than $750,000. That same month, former Madera County benefits eligibility worker Leticia Mariscal was charged for allegedly embezzling $40,000 in food stamp benefits.

The pattern that emerges in California is not one of isolated breakdowns in oversight but of a vast system that almost seems to invite fraud. From widespread failures in unemployment insurance to alleged schemes targeting Medi-Cal to mounting concerns over homelessness spending, each case points to significant lapses by state officials charged with stewarding public funds. According to California Assemblyman David Tangipa, “Sacramento is pervaded by a culture of corruption.” And he points the finger right to the top: Newsom, he says, has helped “create[] an environment where corruption thrives.”

lmfaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo chump change compared to the fraud that the trump criminal syndicate is pulling off on the country.

Probably find some fraud in the silver spoons business book work. People crying about crimes so loudly are almost always the same ones committing those crimes.

I have noticed that the folks that are complaining about the violent crime rate are always the ones running around shooting folks and assaulting and raping.

lmfaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Must be talking about the child rapist and career criminal in the whitehouse that magas pray to every night. Magas dont have to worry, when trump does leave this world, you can be sure God will reunite all of you when your time is up with your false God in that very hot place, that charlie kirk is getting ready for all of you.

@ABooksNightmare

 There should be a weekly special....."The Gavin Newsom Show"......he & his wife are laughing stocks. He tries to make fun of a journalist uncovering the massive fraud in his state instead of doing something himself. He's a disgrace.....& she's quite a tool herself. It would likely get decent ratings.

@THEMUGG

 I see the resident evil troll master has weighed in here...if there were a broken record it would be there.....he doesn't know that the bird is the word...

Gavin and Jen are dopes...they may get good ratings because they are fools....you could call it California Dreamin with $Jen and Da $Gav

These two would be perfect for a late night infomercial on how to properly use the shake weight

...And it just keeps going...

The California Department of Justice and several state agencies arrested five people Wednesday in a crackdown on an alleged hospice fraud ring, and officials said more arrests will come. Several suspects received "notices to appear" in court and will face arrest warrants if they don't show. In total, the state filed charges against 21 suspects.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta said the scheme defrauded California of $267 million through bogus charges to Medi-Cal, the state-administered Medicaid program. Americans pay into Medicare through taxes and premiums, so defrauding it would be essentially stealing from all American taxpayers.

"What will address fraud is us doing the hard work — heads down, sleeves rolled up, doing the investigation, doing the arrests, doing the prosecutions, holding folks accountable," Bonta told CBS News.

Bonta said the defendants collected money without providing a single legitimate hospice service. The law enforcement effort, called Operation Skip Trace, targeted ten locations in Southern California.

According to the California Department of Justice, individuals purchased identifying information for non-California residents from the dark web and used them to enroll in Medi-Cal. Then, straw owners bought 14 hospice companies and billers began billing the government for hospice care for the stolen identities.

"There were no actual services, no hospice centers or any real paperwork, it was all made up as part of this fraudulent criminal activity," Bonta told CBS News.

The charges include conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud, money laundering and identity theft. Defendants also face an aggravated white collar crime enhancement and an aggravated money laundering enhancement.

All of the hospice companies named in the complaints were state-licensed and approved by the California Health and Human Services Agency to bill Medi-Cal.The initial allegation of fraud came from the California Department of Health Care Services.

Tyler Sadwith, DHCS' chief deputy director of health care programs and California state Medicaid director, told CBS News the state is currently investigating over 300 hospices for possible license revocation.

"Taxpayers have an absolute right to expect that the administrators of this program are really prioritizing program integrity," he said. "That continues to be part of our core mission. That continues to be the top priority."

For months, CBS News has examined the business and financial records of every hospice currently operating in LA County, and applied the same indicators of potential fraud identified in a state audit. The CBS News analysis revealed that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County, trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.

Let's keep a running tally fraud for Cali, as I suspect big astronomical numbers here. We'll leave out some of the more blatant fraud that has been discovered before March of 2026 and will use this as a starting point:

March 2026 - $17 million

April 3, 2026 - $50+ million

April 9, 2026 - $267 million

Current total status since March 2026: $334+ million in fraud of taxpayers money...form Golden State to Silver State...

Associated press reports that Trump administration war on fraud is based on misinformation.  No proof fraud is more common in democrat states.  For example in New York, actually 450,000 people receive medicaid healthcare instead of 5 million claimed by Center for medicare and medicaid services.  

That is mixing up two different numbers.

6-7 million are enrolled in Medicaid in New York.

450,000 is for the 'personal care services' portion of that.  They adjusted that claim.

The estimated fraud/waste/inefficiency per capita is estimated at ~$300-400 per person per year.

Their per capita is lower than others but the overall total is higher.