Tag: california

Proof Positive: CA’s Homeless Industrial Complex Is Just a Giant Money-Laundering Operation

Laura Ingraham and Bill Essayli detailed new developments in California’s Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force during a recent exchange focused on the state’s handling of taxpayer-funded homeless services and a growing number of criminal cases tied to misuse of public money.

Ingraham opened the discussion by pointing to the origins of the task force and its narrow focus on homelessness programs, asking why those services became the priority of the investigation.

“Back in April, you launched this task force to investigate corruption in California. You focused on homeless services. Tell us why. This might be just the tip of the fraud iceberg here,” Ingraham said.

Essayli explained that his background as both a former prosecutor in Los Angeles and a former state legislator shaped his decision to examine homelessness spending, particularly given the scale of public investment and the lack of measurable improvement.

“Yeah, Laura, remember, before I was the prosecutor here in LA, I was in the legislature. Over the last five years, California spent $24 billion on homelessness, and it only got worse. So of course, the question is, where did the money go? What happened to 24 billion?” Essayli said.

He said those questions led directly to the creation of the Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force. Essayli acknowledged that federal investigations require time, even as public frustration grows.

“So I launched this task force, and just quickly, I mean, federal investigations do take time. I know the public wants action. It takes time to put these cases together,” he said.

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JD Vance: California Fraud Dwarfs Theft of Federal Funds in Minnesota

Vice President JD Vance revealed this week that about $7 billion worth of Small Business Administration (SBA) fraud has been discovered in California, an indicator the theft of federal funds across all departments in the Golden State could well exceed any other state’s.

“I think we have a fraud problem that is much worse in California than it is in Minnesota,” Vance said in an interview Thursday with Newsmax.

He continued, “I was talking actually to our small business administrator and I think she found probably a half billion dollars of fraud in Minneapolis and the broader Minnesota area. I think she’s found 7 billion dollars worth of fraud in California.”

“This is unfortunately a problem that is much bigger than Minnesota,” he added. ”But it also highlights how absurd this effort to prevent immigration enforcement is.”

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California man arrested for allegedly stealing millions in homeless funds

California officials have arrested Alexander Soofer, who allegedly used tens-of-millions of taxpayer dollars meant to house and feed the homeless to fund his lavish lifestyle, Fox News has learned. 

Soofer was the executive director of the charity Abundant Blessings, which received government funding for its work.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said in a news conference on Friday that Soofer has been charged with wire fraud, a felony that carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

“I want to tell you a little bit about his organization, Abundant Blessings. It was a South Los Angeles-based charity whose purpose is to help house and properly feed the estimated 72,000 homeless people living in the greater Los Angeles area. His organization received more than $23 million in taxpayer funds for the purpose of housing and feeding the homeless,” Essayli said.

“California was pushing this money out quickly. A lot of money went out the door, with, frankly, very little vetting, very little checks and balances. And, he’s one of the individuals that got it in this organization,” he added.

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BUSTED: California Ordered to Return $1+ BILLION After Dr. Oz–Led Audit Exposes Federal Healthcare Funds Spent on Illegal Immigrants

The Trump administration has dropped the hammer on California and a coalition of deep-blue states after a sweeping federal audit uncovered more than $1.3 billion in misused federal healthcare funds spent on non-emergency medical care for illegal immigrants, a clear violation of federal law.

According to a bombshell report highlighted on Fox News, the administration’s aggressive audits, led by Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz, found that seven states and Washington, D.C., improperly billed the federal government for healthcare services that go far beyond what is legally permitted.

Under federal law, states may only use federal Medicaid funds to cover emergency medical services for illegal immigrants. Routine care, elective procedures, and non-emergency treatments must be paid for by the states themselves.

That did not happen.

Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli wrote on X, “California must return more than $1 billion to the federal government after an audit by Dr. Oz and his team uncovered federal dollars being spent on healthcare for illegal immigrants. We are teaming up to combat healthcare fraud so the money can be used for American citizens who need it!”

Federal auditors identified nearly $1.4 billion owed back to U.S. taxpayers, with California alone accounting for the overwhelming majority:

  • California: ~$1.3 billion
  • New York: ~$30.7 million
  • Illinois: ~$29.8 million
  • Minnesota: ~$12.7 million
  • Oregon: ~$5.4 million
  • Washington: ~$2.3 million
  • Washington, D.C.: ~$2.1 million
  • Colorado: ~$1.5 million
  • TOTAL: ~$1.394 billion

These funds were billed to the federal government for routine medical care, not emergencies, an explicit violation of Medicaid rules.

California officials predictably denied wrongdoing, claiming the state “routinely reimburses” the federal government. But the audit findings directly contradict those claims—and the financial damage is already done.

Governor Gavin Newsom has long championed “universal healthcare regardless of immigration status,” proudly expanding taxpayer-funded care to the state’s entire undocumented population.

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OC School District Official Accused of $14M Embezzlement

Jorge Armando Contreras, 52, of Yorba Linda allegedly siphoned more than $14 million from the district over a seven-year period and used it to buy luxury items, a $1 million Yorba Linda residence and cosmetic treatments from a dermatologist.

“I was most surprised by the amount he is alleged to have stolen,” said Debbie Peterson, former mayor of Grover Beach in San Luis Obispo. “In the last few months of his tenure at the district, he was averaging almost $370,000 a month in addition to his substantial salary.”

Peterson is the author of The Happiest Corruption: Sleaze, Lies, & Suicide in a California Beach Town and CITY COUNCIL 101 – Insider’s Guide for New Councilmembers.

“The bad news is at the local government level, we simply do not have the checks and balances that we do at the federal level where the legislative, executive, and judicial branches balance power and accountability,” she said.

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California Billionaires Are Leaving the State in Response to Proposed Wealth Tax

The ultrarich are leaving California as a result of a proposed billionaire tax. “Eat the rich” may be a popular rallying cry, but it’s not viable public policy.

The ballot measure, which was submitted in November 2025 by Suzanne Jimenez, a health care union representative, would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires who were California residents as of the measure’s tax “obligation date” of January 1. Even though the initiative has not yet passed, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya estimates that $1 trillion of billionaire wealth “has left California” in advance of the measure’s tax obligation date. California billionaires have also taken “income tax revenue, sales tax revenue, real estate tax revenue and all their staffs (and their salaries and income taxes) with them,” says Palihapitiya.

The measure would create a Billionaire Tax Health Account, which would receive 90 percent of the revenue generated by the tax. Funds from this account would go “to protect or enhance Medi-Cal,” California’s Medicaid program. (That same program was found by the Biden administration to have improperly claimed nearly $53 million in federal funding on behalf of noncitizens with ineligible immigration statuses from October 2018 through June 2019.) The remaining 10 percent would go to a new Billionaire Tax Education and Food Assistance Account, which would subsidize public K-12 education, plus two years of community college. This account would also help pay for “CalFresh, CalFAP, CalFood or California’s Universal Meals Program for school meals.”

The government should not be in the business of redistributing wealth, and a wealth tax is an especially ineffective means of generating revenue for any purpose. Moving costs might make it hard for other individuals and businesses headquartered in California to leave, but billionaires are highly mobile; they can easily become residents of another state by purchasing a house, acquiring a driver’s license, and registering to vote there.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom understands this eventuality. The New York Times reports that Newsom opposes “‘state-level wealth taxes’ because they encouraged those who would be affected to move to another state.” To avert this outcome, Newsom has been “relentlessly working behind the scenes against the proposal” and “he would fight the measure if it reached the November ballot,” according to the Times.

The act itself recognizes billionaires’ ability to evade taxation: “A large percentage of billionaire wealth is never taxed by the State due to billionaires’ unique ability to control the timing, location, and amount of income tax that they pay.” This tax avoidance is exactly what has happened since the ballot measure was submitted.

Importantly, the tax conflates voting shares with equity, as Garry Tan, president and CEO of venture capital firm Y Combinator, recently explained on X. This means that under the law, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—who each possess 30 percent of the voting rights in Google, but only own 3 percent of its equity—would have to pay a 5 percent tax on the value of their voting control. Tan estimates that this figure would come to about $60 billion each, and in order to pay this, both Page and Brin would have to liquidate 50 percent of their Google shares. The two co-founders recently fled the state to avoid this potential penalty.

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Medicaid FUNNELED to Illegal Aliens Now Tops $1.8 BILLION Across 8 States — CMS Withholds $300M From California, the Worst Offender

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it is withholding nearly $300 million from California after federal auditors have now confirmed that more than $1.8 BILLION in Medicaid funds may have been unlawfully spent on illegal immigrants across EIGHT states.

The update was revealed by Dr. Oz, who issued a blunt warning on X that the problem is “worse than we thought.”

According to Oz, federal law explicitly prohibits the use of federal Medicaid dollars for non-emergency care for illegal immigrants. While states are free to use their own state funds to provide such coverage, they are required to maintain a clear paper trail proving that no federal dollars were used.

As a result, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is now withholding nearly $300 million from California, which Oz described as “by far the worst offender,” until the state can demonstrate it complied with federal law.

“UPDATE: It’s worse than we thought.

In October, we flagged $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds that 6 states may have unlawfully spent on health care for illegal immigrants.

Since then, we’ve gathered more data and the total has grown to over $1.8 billion across 8 states.

It’s against the law to spend federal Medicaid funds on non-emergency healthcare for illegals. If states use their own money to do it, there needs to be a clear paper trail proving that federal dollars didn’t fund those services.

These states failed to provide that for this $1.8 billion. So today, CMS is announcing that we’re withholding nearly $300 million from California — which is by far the worst offender — until they demonstrate to our satisfaction that they’re spending that money properly.

Medicaid dollars belong to Americans, not illegal immigrants, and we won’t stop until we’ve held rogue states accountable and recovered their misspent funds.

More announcements to come.”

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California to Keep Bird Broiling Solar Plant in Operation

I was in Las Vegas with my family the week before Christmas. On the drive back to California we passed a solar generation site called Ivanpah. If you haven’t seen this before it’s pretty striking in person. Instead of using photo-voltaic cells, the site has three towers surrounded by mirrors. The mirrors focus light and heat on the towers which use the concetrated heat to turn turbines.

The site was built with funds from several major companies including Google and a federal loan guarantee of $1.6 billion dollars. When this site opened in 2014, it was considered a step into the future of solar energy, but that quickly changed for several reasons. First, the site never produced as much power as was promised. Second, the cost of PV solar panels dropped dramatically to the point that rate-payers were paying a lot more for Ivanpah’s solar energy than they would be if the site were just full of regular solar panels. And thirdly, the site had some environmental problems including interfering with local tortoises and killing as many as 6,000 birds a year.

A macabre fireworks show unfolds each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky.

Workers at the Ivanpah Solar Plant have a name for the spectacle: “Streamers.”

And the image-conscious owners of the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying everything they can think of to stop the slaughter.

Federal biologists say about 6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility’s three 40-story towers, which catch sunlight from five square miles of garage-door-size mirrors to drive the plant’s power-producing turbines.

For all of these reasons, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration agreed the state should shut down Ivanpah. Here’s a video Reason made about it last April.

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CA Mayor Drops a Bombshell On the NGO Scheme Defrauding Americans

El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells appeared in an interview with Real America’s Voice host Dan Ball to criticize California’s homeless funding structure, arguing that billions of dollars intended to address homelessness are being allocated without input from local governments most affected by the crisis.

Wells said cities like El Cajon, which he said have absorbed a disproportionate share of San Diego County’s homeless population, are excluded from decisions about how homelessness funds are distributed.

He placed blame on the California Homeless Task Force and county leadership, saying elected local officials are sidelined while non-governmental organizations control the money.

“The County board says we have no idea how much is spent. To make matters worse. They’re in conjunction with a homeless Task Force, that they’re the people who are on that homeless Task Force decide where all the money goes,” Wells said.

“Well, guess who serves on that homeless Task Force. All the heads of the NGOs. So the NGO’s get to make the decisions about where the money is spent and guess where they spend it?”

Ball interrupted Wells to clarify his point, comparing the structure to allowing those who benefit from the funds to control their distribution.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, but are you telling me that’s like letting the inmates run a prison, so the people that get to say where the money goes. Are the people that are getting the money in the nonprofit groups,” Ball asked.

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If Fraud In Minnesota Looks Bad, Wait Till You See Gavin Newsom’s California 

As a former California state assemblyman who spent four years on the Budget Committee, I had a front-row seat to Sacramento’s obsession with “pulling down” federal dollars, turning welfare programs into a free-for-all.

Then-state Auditor Elaine Howle ran a lean operation, issuing spot-on reports about waste and vulnerabilities — and getting ignored time and again. California maximized payments for SNAP, Medi-Cal, and unemployment insurance with little regard for fraud controls.

That same reckless mindset has fueled scandals across blue states, with Minnesota serving as the appetizer to California’s main course of fiscal disaster.

Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraud — where crooks were convicted last March of pocketing $250-300 million in federal child nutrition funds by claiming phantom meals for kids — was a mere fraction of what was to come.

Today, Minnesota’s likely fraud toll has ballooned, with nearly $9 billion in suspected Medicaid scams since 2018, involving fake providers, ghost services, and out-of-state hustlers. Despite 80 charged, 50-plus guilty pleas, and assets like luxury cars forfeited in the Feeding Our Future scam, recoveries are a drop in the bucket. State agencies have ignored red flags, paralyzed by fears of discrimination lawsuits — or even just being labeled “racists.” And that allowed fraudsters to run wild.

But if Minnesota’s the starter, California’s the feast.

The Golden State’s Covid-19 unemployment insurance debacle at the Employment Development Department (EDD) was a masterclass in negligence: $177 billion paid out, with fraud hitting $20 billion by official counts and up to $32.6 billion by independent estimates. Scammers exploited lax ID checks, using stolen Social Security numbers for bogus claims while the real workers who owned those SSNs labored for their daily bread.

The financial recoveries? Pathetic.

And now, in an effort to repay $20-23 billion in federal loans, businesses have been slapped with their fifth year of Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) surcharges — $84 per employee extra in 2025, rising yearly. In other words, Gavin Newsom’s California punishes job creators for his government’s failure. Interest could soon top $1 billion annually, with ongoing unemployment insurance shortfalls piling on.

Then there’s the expansion of Medi-Cal to cover illegal aliens, fully implemented in 2024. Promised costs: $3 billion or more a year. Actual costs: $9.5 billion, with $8.4 million coming from the General Fund in 2024-25, enrollment nearing 2 million, and per-person expenses soaring.

California isn’t legally allowed to spend federal money on covering illegal aliens. But through the magic of financial fungibility, California has figured out how to force taxpayers in Texas and Florida to pick up the tab. This must stop.

Facing a big budget blowout, Sacramento froze new adult enrollments from January 2026, axed dental benefits for this group, and slapped on $30 monthly premiums starting in 2027. All of this is projected to save roughly $80 million short-term but billions over time.

Yet it still drains resources from citizens, pulling in indirect federal funds while exposing taxpayers to runaway costs.

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