A journalist who claims that California has lost at least $180 billion due to fraud joined “Will Cain Country” to share the findings of his exposé entitled “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud.”
Chris Rufo of City Journal co-authored the piece. He told host Will Cain on Tuesday that California’s fraud stems from three main sources: Medi-Cal fraud, unemployment fraud and general welfare fraud.
“And if you add these all together, under Gavin Newsom, experts and HHS officials estimate that California has lost somewhere between $180 and $280 billion. Now that’s like the GDP of New Zealand. It’s a lot of money,” said Rufo.
The sheer scale of the problem is more than the federal government can handle given currently allocated resources, he added, expressing frustration with the lack of accountability.
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“The ugly reality, and this is a criticism, frankly, of the federal government right now under President Trump, is that they’re going to have to significantly scale up these efforts if they want to deter fraud in the future,” Rufo said.
He said he hopes to spur additional action through his reporting, and that a big area of focus for him has been California’s in-home care program.
The program is intended to help support those who cannot work because they must provide full-time care for a loved one. But Rufo said it has become the most common job in the state.
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“We’re paying approximately 800,000 people to stay home or to stay in the homes of the care recipients. And because it operates essentially on an honor system… it’s all done in private,” he said.
Rufo said thousands of whistleblower reports on the matter led to hundreds of investigations and ultimately fewer than 100 prosecutions.
Rufo called it a “shadow welfare system,” but said Californians were beginning to grow wise to the scam.
“I think California voters are starting to look around and saying, wait a moment, this is now 10% of our state budget. It’s $30 billion a year,” he added. “What on earth are we doing? Why do we seem to be paying for everybody, for everything, including fraudsters, when the quality of life in California for middle class working people seems to get worse and worse?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office pushed back on the idea that his administration wasn’t proactive enough in going after fraudsters.
“This is utter bulls— from top to bottom,” a Newsom spokesperson told The New York Post. “California will keep doing its part to go against fraud, we ask the federal government to work with us to do the same.”
The governor’s office previously stated they have been taking action for “years” on the issue of hospice fraud.
“Glad the federal government is finally stepping up to do their part,” they reacted to a federal anti-fraud task force’s actions in California, per The Post. “State has been taking action for years, including suspending 280+ licenses & banning new licenses since 2022. Big question: Will Trump pardon any of them like he’s done for so many fraudsters before?”
