California’s Massive Benefit Scams: Why Minnesota’s Fraud is Just ‘Child’s Play,’ Explains Chris Rufo on ‘Pod Force One

The extent of fraudulent activity in California under Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has reached a staggering scale, with one conservative activist suggesting it dwarfs scandals in Minnesota, describing them as “child’s play.” This revelation was made in a recent episode of “Pod Force One,” highlighting the fact that at one point, only two officials were tasked with tackling fraudsters in California.

Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an early voice in exposing Minnesota’s Somali fraud issue, emphasized the magnitude of the problem during his conversation with “Pod Force One” host Miranda Devine. “The scale in California is on a completely different level,” Rufo remarked.

Since Governor Newsom took office in 2019, California has inadvertently become a prime target for scammers, Rufo explained. “People from diverse backgrounds and regions have realized that California’s government has essentially left the door open for fraud schemes,” he shared with Devine.

Rufo, who is also a filmmaker and author, noted that approximately $32 billion was fraudulently claimed from California’s unemployment insurance program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One particularly egregious case Rufo mentioned involved Tennessee rapper Nuke Bizzle, who brazenly flaunted his fraudulent activities in a music video, detailing exactly how he exploited California’s system.

In one notorious case highlighted by Rufo, Tennessee rapper Nuke Bizzle was caught ripping off taxpayers only after he released a music video “detailing precisely how he was able to defraud the state of California.” 

“But there is also this ethnic, ethno-political element,” the influential author continued. “And you see certain populations, for example, the Armenians in Southern California, that seem to be perpetrating fraud at scale. 

“One police detective I talked to said Romanians, Armenians, Nigerians, there are certain kind of sub-populations or national populations that have been caught over and over and over ripping off the state government.”

“For whatever complex historical and cultural reasons,” these groups, according to Rufo, “have a culture of exploitation, fraud, ripping off the government.” 

“They come to the United States, they come to California in particular, and one insider told us the thing about California is this, you’re most likely to not get caught, and if you get caught you’re most likely to not face charges, and if you do face charges and get convicted, you’re most likely to not serve much, if any time at all,” he added. “And so, it’s a means, motive and opportunity. It’s a classic story of criminal conduct, and that’s why I think you see it happening in California at such scale.”

Rufo, who also led the fight to expose critical race theory and DEI in education, argued that fraudsters have largely been able to get away with stealing from the state because “’no effective fraud controls” have been implemented. 

“Just to use the example of unemployment insurance, when California was spending billions of dollars per week at the height of COVID, losing tens of billions of dollars to fraudsters, in our reporting we showed that in the entire state, there were only two individual bureaucrats assigned to actually give oversight to the system to ensure that there wasn’t fraudulent activity,” Rufo said, “and so when they’re being flooded with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pieces of paperwork per day, two people is obviously insufficient to oversee that amount of funding.”

Aside from the criminals themselves, others benefiting from fraud in California include political groups, like labor unions, and Democratic politicians, including Newsom, Rufo argued. 

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“[H]e benefits from the perception of an increase in employment,” Rufo said of Newsom. “So, if there are people working for in-home supportive services, which is probably the most fraud-ridden program in California, it looks like California is adding jobs, even if many of those jobs are fraudulent.” 

“And second, and relatedly, the public sector and rather the private sector or semi-public sector unions benefit,” the Manhattan Institute fellow continued. “So, if money is flooding through the healthcare system, those healthcare-worker unions take their cut, they get now hundreds of millions of dollars per year by skimming wages off the top, and then a lot of that money goes back into the coffers of California State Democrats.

“So, when you look at the system as a whole, it resembles a circle, and the money flows from taxpayers to fraud schemes, to unions, to politicians, and then it’s kind of crisscrossing between those various entities.” 

Rufo warned “the system will not change so long as the people who have the levers of power benefit from the system.”

“That’s the lesson that we’ve seen over and over.”