From Medi-Cal fraud to a Nigerian chieftain

We always suspected that Medi-Cal fraud was expensive. We didn’t realize it was ridiculous.

Last week, the California Post reported on a staggering $269 million scheme run by a “mega fraudster” who ripped off the state’s version of Medicaid, which provides health coverage for the poor.

He was caught, tried, and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

Then Christopher F. Rufo and Madeleine Rowley of the Manhattan Institute ran an éxposé, also published in the California Post, on Nathan Ogbatue, a Nigerian chieftain who had made a fortune by charging Medi-Cal for in-home health care.

Ogbatue’s company had made very little money in California until it suddenly made tens of millions of dollars after the coronavirus pandemic.

He bought expensive real estate in Southern California and built a palace back home, where he spreads the wealth around among his grateful subjects.

He has not been accused of wrongdoing, but experts raised red flags. And he accused journalists of racism rather than defending his odd business pattern.

Medi-Cal is just one piece of the overall fraud picture in California. But it is a big one.

The program exploded in 2024, after Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democrat-run state Legislature expanded eligibility for Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants.

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It was a version of “Medicare for All.” But it nearly collapsed.

Newsom had to stop new enrollments last year, after monthly losses ran into billions of dollars.

But Democrats are determined to try again.

With that much spending, there is bound to be waste and theft from the program.

That’s what happened during the pandemic, when the state’s unemployment department lost tens of billions of dollars to fraud.

To this day, California hasn’t paid back the debt it owes to the federal government for unemployment benefits during COVID — benefits that were often simply stolen, including by foreign syndicates.

Then there are the hospice fraud schemes — amounting to about $3.5 billion in LA County alone.

When Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, pointed out hospice fraud in California, Newsom accused him of racism.

Then the state pretended it had been tracking down fraudsters all along.

There is too much tolerance for fraud among California’s political class. They seem to think fraud is acceptable if public money somehow finds its way to helping someone.

Ironically, the biggest victims are Californians who depend on public services — the people politicians claim they want to help.