first exposed <\/a>by The Times in 2020 and later investigated by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. <\/p>\n\u201cEighteen percent of the whole country\u2019s home healthcare billing is coming out of Los Angeles County \u2014 how is that possible?\u201d said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. \u201cIt\u2019s about $3.5 billion just in L.A. County for hospice and home healthcare.\u201d <\/p>\n
The move comes just days after Washington froze $10 billion in federal funding for child care in California, New York, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota over \u201cserious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happening in Minnesota pales in comparison to the level of fraud that we believe is occurring in California,\u201d said Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, referring to the benefits scandal that erupted out of that state\u2019s Somali community late last year. <\/p>\n
In a lawsuit filed Friday, the states\u2019 attorneys general called the child-care fund freeze nakedly political, saying the administration has weaponized allegations of fraud to blame immigrants for holes in the safety net and tar political rivals as corrupt.<\/p>\n
At the briefing Friday, Oz and Essayli told reporters \u201cforeign influences\u201d were draining government healthcare programs, making care inaccessible to Americans while California leaders turned a blind eye. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are Russian, Armenian gangs, mafia that are leading a lot of these efforts,\u201d Oz said. \u201cThis president will not tolerate having Americans defrauded by foreign influences.\u201d <\/p>\n
Essayli laid the blame on Gov. Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has reigned over more fraud than I think we\u2019ve ever seen in American history,\u201d Essayli said. \u201cJust look at the amount of fraud that\u2019s been perpetrated in the kingdom of California. He is the fraud king.\u201d <\/p>\n
The governor hit back at the Trump administration\u2019s rhetoric about lawlessness<\/a> in his State of the State speech Thursday, with Newsom saying the country faces \u201can assault on our values unlike anything I\u2019ve seen in my lifetime,\u201d and citing statistics that show violent crime is at historic lows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump administration officials announced a sprawling probe into benefits fraud across California on Friday, citing what they called…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":505234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[9331,226318,29414,1582,276,25710,12847,98670,226319,5208,226320,2961,224,2444,5337,3663,290,38974,226321],"class_list":{"0":"post-505233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-benefit-fraud","10":"tag-bill-essayli","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-child-care","14":"tag-dollar","15":"tag-dr-oz","16":"tag-foreign-influence","17":"tag-friday","18":"tag-home-healthcare-billing","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-times","22":"tag-losangeles","23":"tag-minnesota","24":"tag-state","25":"tag-trump-administration-official","26":"tag-whole-country"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115868695561436661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}