- A City Journal investigation reveals that fraudsters have stolen at least $180 billion from California taxpayers since Governor Gavin Newsom took office in 2018.
- Nearly 25 percent of the state’s $197 billion Medi-Cal budget—one program alone—may be lost to fraud each year, totaling roughly $50 billion annually.
- Unemployment insurance, welfare, homelessness programs, and in-home health care have all become magnets for organized crime rings and scammers.
- A Democratic state senator introduced legislation in 2025 that would raise the felony threshold for welfare fraud from $950 to $25,000, effectively legalizing large-scale theft.
- California’s own lawmakers admit a “culture of corruption” now pervades Sacramento, enabled by one-party rule and deliberate policy choices.
- With state officials unwilling or unable to fix the problem, federal prosecutors and President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud are stepping in.
- The scandal exposes the deeper failure of progressive governance: massive spending without accountability turns compassion into a con.
California’s golden dream has curdled into something darker—an empire of fraud that has quietly drained at least $180 billion from taxpayers since Governor Gavin Newsom assumed power. What began as isolated headlines about unemployment scams and ghost hospices has crystallized into a systemic catastrophe documented by a sweeping City Journal investigation. The numbers are not abstract. They represent stolen wages, vanished services for the truly needy, and a betrayal of the public trust so profound that even some Sacramento insiders now call it a “culture of corruption.”