Have you heard of the bombshell report titled “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud?”
What follows are direct quotes from the introduction to the exposé conducted by the think tank “The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research”:
California’s Cash Machine
The state collects some of the country’s highest income, business, and fuel taxes, and now spends more than $300 billion per year.
And yet, everywhere you look, California seems to be falling apart.
The roads are crumbling. Mismanaged wildfires have turned neighborhoods into ash. Drug addiction and homelessness have metastasized, turning parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco into no-go zones, and the cost-of-living crisis is pricing middle-class taxpayers out of basic necessities like groceries and gas, even as the state spends billions on welfare programs that never seem to lift anyone out of poverty.
Californians are beginning to ask: Where is all this money going?
On paper, it funds public services. But beneath the surface, something else is happening: massive, systematic, brazen fraud.
We (The Manhattan Institute) conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud.
Seemingly, every state program has been compromised by criminals.
The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.
Welcome to Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud
The culture of fraud in California is so pervasive that it has allegedly reached the governor’s own former chief of staff Dana Williamson who has been charged with fraud for allegedly “siphoning campaign and COVID-19 recovery funds into her and an associate’s pockets.” Two other “well-connected aides were also charged” and struck plea deals that reportedly confirmed the scheme’s existence.
Many Opportunities to Cheat & Steal from Taxpayers
That was merely the introduction of the report! In summary, the report indicates that some of the worst fraud occurred during Covid, when the state handed out tens of billions of dollars without bothering to implement basic fraud controls. In fact, the state suspended all the rules it had in place before the epidemic hit. That is to say, the investigators believed the state opened the door to massive fraud intentionally. Criminals here and abroad had a field day including a gang from Romania, a California neo-Nazi gang known as the SFV Peckerwoods, the former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, and some 133 inmates on death row. All in all, some $20 billion was paid out in fraudulent claims during the pandemic and an estimated $55 billion in improper payments!
Other opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse abounded.
While under Newsom’s watch, Medi-Cal spending more than doubled while our population slightly declined. One couple, all by themselves, defrauded taxpayers of more than $178 million.
In-Home Support Services, a Medi-Cal program, pays caregivers to care for people who might otherwise have to be institutionalized. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger estimated the fraud in this program to be as high as 25%. The program, which is now spending some $33 billion per year, had increased some 170% and is responsible for 41% of “job gains” during the Newsom administration, even though most of the people getting paid – some 70% – are caring for their own family members. Yet the program’s protocols explicitly prohibit random unannounced home visits that would serve to uncover potential fraud.
State experts believe that Medi-Cal has wasted upwards of $146 billion in taxpayer funds under Newsom’s watch.
Then, we have the various welfare programs including some $24 billion spent on homeless projects. Federal prosecutor Bill Essayli has brought charges against several individuals accused of bilking the system of tens of millions of dollars.
The report rightly observes that the pattern of waste, fraud, and abuse in CA is not one of isolated breakdowns in oversight but of a vast system that almost seems to invite fraud. As one Assemblyman put it, “Sacramento is pervaded by a culture of corruption” and Newsom helped create it.
In Conclusion
One must ask what happened to institutional safeguards, including the office of our State Attorney General Rob Bonta, our state’s “top cop?” As it turns out, Bonta, by way of Newsom’s direction, has been ignoring crime in our state altogether because he would rather be suing the Trump administration nonstop. According to CA.gov, in just over six months, Attorney General Bonta has filed 37 lawsuits, leading or co-leading 23 of them, and separately filed more than 40 amicus briefs in support of other litigation against the Trump Administration.
Such is life in our one-party banana republic, overly and overtly ripe with waste, fraud, abuse, and misfeasance.
You can find the full report here:
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I say..elect Steve Hilton who promises to bring an end to this fiscal mess