Vice President JD Vance's anti-fraud task force has suspended 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies in Los Angeles over more than $600 million in suspected fraud, a staggering escalation that dwarfs the 70 suspensions Fox News Digital reported at the beginning of April.
That is a roughly 539% increase in suspensions in a matter of weeks. And a White House official says the numbers are going to keep climbing.
The scope of the Los Angeles crackdown raises an uncomfortable question for California's political establishment: How did hundreds of allegedly fraudulent healthcare providers operate under the state's nose, and what, exactly, were Sacramento regulators doing while taxpayer money walked out the door?
The 470 total suspensions cover hospice care and home health agencies accused of bilking federal healthcare programs. The task force, led by Vance, has pegged the suspected fraud at more than $600 million. The sheer number of providers flagged in a single metro area suggests something far beyond isolated bad actors.
A Vance spokesperson laid down the marker plainly:
"Where there is fraud, the task force will find it. We will not stop until every hard-earned taxpayer dollar goes toward the honest Americans who deserve them."
A White House official went further, warning suspected fraudsters directly:
"To all fraudsters: good luck trying to hide from the Vice President's task force. [The anti-fraud task force is] reviewing and pursuing every possible lead. These suspension numbers, and the dollar values saved, are only going to increase."
The task force's work in Los Angeles is part of a broader federal push. The Washington Times reported that President Trump formally designated Vance as the new "Fraud Czar," heading a task force established earlier in the month to tackle fraud in government-funded services. The FBI and Justice Department also announced a major crackdown in Los Angeles targeting fraudulent hospice companies accused of bilking Medicare out of about $50 million.
In February, Vance and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced plans to block $259.5 million in Medicaid funds to Minnesota, another state where fraud in government-funded programs had drawn intense scrutiny. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made a January decision not to seek a third term amid that growing scrutiny.
The task force has also flagged $6.3 billion in suspect government contracts across a wider federal review, underscoring the breadth of the problem Vance's operation is uncovering.
Los Angeles is not new to healthcare fraud on an industrial scale. Federal prosecutors have described systemic problems in the state's Medi-Cal system, and the pattern of massive fraud cases keeps repeating. Earlier this year, the city's top federal prosecutor said a $270 million Medi-Cal fraud case hinted at a far deeper problem in California's oversight of healthcare spending.
The hospice sector has been a particular magnet for fraud. Providers bill for patients who may not need hospice care, or who may not exist at all. The business model is simple: enroll names, submit claims, collect checks. When regulators are slow and penalties are light, the math works in the fraudster's favor.
That is precisely the environment the Vance task force appears to have found in Los Angeles. Four hundred and forty-seven hospices in a single county is not a rounding error. It is a system that either failed to detect fraud or lacked the will to stop it.
The pattern extends beyond hospice care. Authorities have arrested suspects in an alleged $267 million hospice fraud ring that billed Medi-Cal for phantom patients, and a California man recently pleaded guilty in a separate $178 million scheme, cases that together paint a picture of a state where fraud has metastasized.
While federal investigators were ramping up enforcement in Los Angeles, California lawmakers were moving in a very different direction. Democratic Assemblywoman Mia Bonta introduced AB 2624, a bill titled "privacy for immigration support services providers." The bill has already passed through one committee in the California Assembly in an 11-2 vote.
The California Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, chaired by Bonta herself, described the bill this way in its hearing synopsis:
"This bill expands the Secretary of State's Safe at Home program to allow designated immigration support services providers, employees, and volunteers who have experienced harm or threats of violence because of their work with immigrants to register allowing them to keep their addresses out of public records."
On its face, the bill is framed as a safety measure. But critics say it would shield taxpayer-funded organizations from the kind of investigative journalism that has exposed fraud in the first place.
Bonta told KSBW8 that "doxxing" businesses "isn't journalism" and that "this is a time when we absolutely need to make sure that people are able to be protected as they seek to do the good work to protect our immigrant communities."
Independent journalist Nick Shirley, known for exposing the Quality "Learing" Center and other healthcare fraud operations in Minnesota, recently turned his attention to California. He posted to X that AB 2624 was a direct response to his work.
Shirley wrote that the bill "would criminalize investigative journalism with misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, imprisonment, and content takedown." He added: "The proposed bill is titled AB 2624 and was made after I exposed mass fraud by immigrant groups in America."
In a statement, DeMaio said:
"AB 2624 can only be described as the 'Stop Nick Shirley Act', a bill designed to silence citizen journalists exposing fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars."
DeMaio went further, arguing that the bill "would allow activists and taxpayer-funded organizations to demand the removal of video evidence, even if it captures misconduct in plain view" and threatens journalists with massive financial penalties.
The contrast could hardly be sharper. On one side, a federal task force is suspending hundreds of suspect providers and warning that enforcement is accelerating. On the other, California's Democratic majority is advancing legislation that critics say would make it harder to expose the very fraud the feds are finding.
DeMaio framed the stakes bluntly:
"Instead of fixing the fraud problems being uncovered, Sacramento politicians are trying to shut down the people exposing them."
Consider the timeline. Federal investigators flag more than $600 million in suspected fraud among Los Angeles hospices and home health agencies. An independent journalist gains national attention for exposing fraud in government-funded programs. And a California assemblywoman, who also chairs the committee that approved the bill, introduces legislation that would expand privacy protections for the very category of organizations under scrutiny.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Mia Bonta and her husband, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Meanwhile, the federal probe shows no signs of slowing. The broader congressional appetite for accountability extends well beyond healthcare, House Republicans have put other organizations on notice over obstruction of fraud investigations.
The $600 million figure in Los Angeles alone is a number that should focus the mind. That money was supposed to pay for end-of-life care and home health services for real patients. Instead, according to the task force, it was siphoned by providers who may have done little or nothing to earn it.
Shirley, the journalist whose work appears to have helped trigger both the federal scrutiny and the legislative backlash, posted a warning of his own on X:
"Under AB 2624, government-funded entities like the Somali 'Learing' Daycare centers would be protected from being exposed if they operated inside California."
The open questions remain significant. Which specific providers were suspended? Which agency formally issued the suspensions? How was the $600 million fraud estimate calculated? And what, precisely, does AB 2624 do beyond the title and committee synopsis, what penalties does it impose, and on whom?
Those answers matter. But the broad outlines are already clear enough. Federal investigators found a fraud problem so large it required suspending nearly 500 providers in a single county. And California's legislature responded, not by tightening oversight, but by moving to shield the organizations that journalists had been investigating.
When the people catching fraud are working harder than the people supposed to prevent it, taxpayers deserve to know whose side their state government is on.
