MASSIVE welfare fraud in California, part # 456,934

"City Journal" is one of the good guys: honest, non-hysterical, rock-solid.  If you wanna know what's going on with the corrupt Dem shitholes, you need to read these folks.

Wait, my bad:  Cuz if you're a Democrat you do NOT want to know what's going on.  Or else you cheer the massive theft, just as Dems today are actually pushing up-scale elite women to steal from Whole Foods and other big companies.  "No problem," right?  And gummint is just like a big company, eh?  Ahh yes, of course.

Amusingly, reality will sort this all out, sooner than you might imagine.  If you're under 40 you'll almost certainly get to live it.  Spoiler: you won't like it.  And you can thank Democrats and RINOs.

SO...thanks to decades of Democrat one-party rule, California is one of the most corrupt states in the nation--and that's saying something.  Thanks to corrupt Democrat policies, billions of taxpayer dollars are being lost each year to brazen, obvious fraud.  That is, easily detected, easily prosecuted.  But the corrupt Dem state refuses BOTH to investigate fraud, to prosecute, AND to change policies to make it harder for grifters to steal. 

Average Democrat: "NOOoooo, dis not true!  Dis jus' a right-wing conspiracy story!  Dey jus' wanna make life harder fo' duh po' pipo!"

Except it IS true.  And you ain't seen nuthin' yet.  Twenty years from now people will be writing books about how obvious the massive, organized fraud encouraged by stupid Dem welfare programs was, and they'll be amazed that conservatives put up with it.

Problem was, we didn't have a choice, because Democrats are in the majority in all the Dem-ruled shithole states, so "anything goes" if they want it.

Democrat rulers--and corrupt leftist judges--have been able to shut down EVERY effort to stop it.  And with that, here's an edited version of the City Journal piece.  They go into more detail, so you're encouraged to read the original here.

Few programs are more troubled than California's $30 billion grift-fest called the "In-Home Supportive Services Program," paid for by federal Medicare and Medicaid funds, re-labeled as "Medi-Cal." 

IHSS has become one of the largest fraud programs in the U.S, with about $12 billion every YEAR being stolen by grifters.  

The program sounds compassionate: rather than putting elderly people in state hospitals, why not pay people to care for *their* disabled and elderly *family members* at home, eh?

Sound faaaabulous!  But like ALL gummint programs, grifters quickly found out how to exploit (i.e. defraud) it.  The Dem rulers created "rules" that enabled massive fraud.

A growing cadre of whistleblowers has confirmed that IHSS has become a way for criminals to get rich quick.

We interviewed a former California law-enforcement official who worked on Medi-Cal fraud cases.  Our source says the biggest source of fraud is “overlords” who buy homes and stuff them with sickly Californians, cut off from their families, to pocket taxpayer money. 

And of course the corrupt Dem-ruled state doesn’t care. Fraud is almost never punished: few cases are ever pursued, and the few that are are routinely downgraded by corrupt leftist California judges from felonies to...time served.  Favored  offenders are let off with community service.  And not a single stolen dollar is ever recovered.

The corrupt bastards never even TRY to recover stolen taxpayer money--cuz that might reflect badly on Democrat rulers.

Edited interview:

City Journal: How widespread is IHSS and Medi-Cal fraud?

Source: It’s been happening for decades.  The problem is that even when we press charges, judges just plead cases down to nothing.

CJ: What level of fraud gets investigated or prosecuted?

Source:  When I tried to get the FBI to investigate an alleged theft of $500,000 (under the bribem regime), they said that wasn’t enough for them even to look at.
   Leftist judges always end up plea-bargaining fraud charges down to misdemeanors, then giving offenders community service.  *They never go to jail*--because the judges sympathize with IHSS providers.
   
CJ: What makes the IHSS system so vulnerable to fraud?

Source:  Because the system doesn't have any checks for fraud.  They simply trust that fraudsters are telling the truth. 

CJ:  Are there any meaningful background checks for IHSS providers?

Source:  No. (Editor’s note: California Dems bleat that they require background checks for IHSS providers--and yet allows those with criminal records to get "exemptions" for all but the most heinous crimes.)

CJ: What do large-scale fraud operations look like?

Source: There’s one person—I always call them the overlord—who buys or rents 15 or 20 houses and turns them into IHSS homes.  He divides the space up and even puts ten people in the garage. 

CJ: What happens to people in these homes?

Source: Once you end up in one of these homes, they take ownership of everything.  The overlord gets access to the victim's bank account and gets power of attorney. They hold your cellphone so your family can’t contact you. You have families reaching out, saying, “I can’t reach my grandpa. Every time I go over there, they don’t open the door.”
   In one case fraudsters sold a victim’s home, stole the victim’s money, and kept the victim in poor condition. 

CJ: What has happened to the overlords?

Source: An IHSS fraudster who went to prison kept collecting IHSS payments through a family member. 
   No effort is ever made to recover money stolen from taxpayers.  No one bothers to try.  By the time anyone notices it's too late to bring a case.

CJ: What is the most common type of IHSS fraud?

Source:  Ghost billing: Fraudsters either bill for services that weren’t provided, including billing for people who died or are no longer in their care.
 
CJ: What role do doctors play in IHSS fraud?

Source: You have doctors who are billing for supposedly seeing 75 patients in one day.  That’s impossible. There’s no way a doctor can see 75 people in a day. 

CJ: Why isn’t fraud caught earlier?

Source: Even if a patient’s Social Security number is being simultaneously used by IHSS and a skilled nursing facility, the facility won’t be notified. Staff aren’t going to tell the patient, “Wait a minute. Somebody else is using your Social.” The databases don’t talk to one another. We can only connect the dots after the fact a year into the fraud. 

CJ: Couldn’t IHSS’s system flag something simple, like ten recipients at the same address?

Source: Yes but for some reason they don’t have those kinds of checks set up.  The only people who really know who’s in the house are the social workers, but they don't rat out the overlord because it isn't their job.

CJ: What happens if fraud is identified? Is the money recovered?

Source: My contact at IHSS explained that they send the fraudster a bill and say, “You owe us this much.”  But there’s never any follow-up or prosecution.  You'd think they'd at least kick the fraudsters out of the system, but they don’t.

CJ: Would unannounced visits help uncover more fraud and prevent elder abuse?

Source: Yes. 

CJ: What other changes would you recommend?

Source: The background checks seem insufficient. Disqualifying people who have any felony conviction would seem an obvious place to start. 

Source: City Journal

https://www.city-journal.org/article/california-in-home-supportive-services-program-ihss-fraud