Federal authorities raided fraudulent healthcare businesses across Los Angeles early Thursday morning, part of a rapidly expanding crackdown that has now suspended 221 hospice and healthcare providers in the city alone. The number represents a 215% increase from just one week earlier, when 70 providers were initially cut off.
The anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance is moving at a pace that should embarrass every official who looked the other way for years. According to Fox News Digital, FBI and SWAT teams arrested multiple individuals Thursday as part of a blitz on fraudulent businesses in the Los Angeles area, including two people behind an alleged $7 million scheme.
A senior Trump administration official made clear this is only the beginning. "We expect this number to grow much, much higher in the coming weeks."
The scale of the fraud uncovered in a single metro area is breathtaking. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X that "Operation Never Say Die" involves 11 defendants accused of defrauding healthcare and hospice systems of more than $50 million.
Vance himself flagged the operation on social media, writing that federal law enforcement was "taking down fraudsters who stole $50M+ from Americans by defrauding our healthcare and hospice systems."
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz put the progress in perspective when speaking to the California Post: "In 10 weeks we're getting close to what Governor Newsom did in four years."
That single line tells you everything about the difference between a government that tolerates fraud as background noise and one that treats it like the theft it is.
Governor Gavin Newsom's office has pushed back on the fraud allegations for months, claiming the governor blocked $125 billion in fraud and insisting that many flagged programs are federally administered, not state-run. A Newsom spokesperson offered this response to Fox News Digital in March:
"Gavin Newsom runs a state. Donald Trump runs his mouth. Again and again, we've shown that the programs they are attempting to call out are programs the federal government is administering, not the state."
The deflection is revealing. When 221 providers in your largest city get suspended for suspected fraud in the span of weeks, the question isn't who technically administers the program. The question is why it took a federal task force to find what was happening under your nose.
Newsom's argument amounts to: this isn't my problem. But these providers operate in California. They employ Californians. They bill for services rendered, or not rendered, to California residents. If the governor's office genuinely blocked $125 billion in fraud and the problem is still this severe, that should prompt soul-searching, not press releases.
California is not the only state in the task force's crosshairs. The crackdown follows months of work that already exposed massive fraud in Minnesota, where Vance said at least "$19 billion" has been uncovered. In February, $259.5 million in Medicaid funding was withheld from Minnesota over fraud concerns. Shortly after, Governor Tim Walz announced he would not seek a third term.
President Trump himself signaled the California push was coming, posting in early January that the state "is more corrupt than Minnesota."
What's emerging is not a series of isolated busts. It's a picture of systemic rot in how federal healthcare dollars flow through states with lax oversight and little political incentive to clamp down. Hospice fraud is particularly ugly. These schemes exploit programs designed for the dying and their families, diverting money meant for end-of-life care into the pockets of criminals.
A Vance spokesperson framed the effort in terms that resonate far beyond Washington:
"The Administration's War on Fraud once again yields results as more suspensions take place and fraudsters face justice for ripping off hard-working Americans and stealing their tax dollars and social services."
The task force expects the number of suspended providers to "dramatically increase." If the first ten weeks are any indication, the final tally will be staggering, and the political fallout for officials who presided over this mess will be well-deserved.
Every dollar stolen from Medicare and Medicaid is a dollar that didn't reach a patient. Every fraudulent hospice provider displaced a legitimate one. The human cost of this corruption has been invisible for years, buried under bureaucratic indifference and political convenience.
Now someone is counting.