California benefit scams make Minnesota fraud look like childs play, Chris Rufo tells Pod Force One

The level of fraud in California under Democratic Gov.Gavin Newsom makes Minnesota’s scandals look like “child’s play,” a conservative activist explained on the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” noting that at one point only two officials were tasked to root out scammers in the Golden State. “The scale of it in the state of California is just another level entirely,” Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of the first writers to shed light on the Minnesota Somali fraud problem, told “Pod Force One” host Miranda Devine. Since Newsom was sworn in as governor in 2019, California has become  a “big fat target” for scammers, Rufo explained. “Individuals from all walks of life, all nationalities, even all parts of the country have recognized that the California government is essentially open to business for fraud schemes,” he told Devine. Rufo, a filmmaker and author, pointed out that “fraudsters stole approximately $32 billion from the state’s unemployment insurance program” during the COVID-19 pandemic. 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...