LA’s top prosecutor says fraud so widespread DOJ will ‘never have enough’ prosecutors to fight it

There’s so much fraud happening in California that Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor believes he could “never have enough” prosecutors to tackle it all.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli spoke to The Post Friday about fraud in California — and how, despite his “unlimited hiring authority,” the Department of Justice is starving for new prosecutors aimed at the “almost unimaginable” amount of fraud in the state.

“We’re in a very target rich environment, and there is no shortage of leads for fraud investigations,” he said. “I would say we are doing a lot with what we have. We’re probably more productive than this office has been in years. However, our biggest limiting factor is having enough quality investigators and attorneys to work up and prosecute the cases.”

He described that the office is searching for “smart, capable and hungry prosecutors,” who aren’t just looking for a government paycheck. Essayli said they’ve resorted to looking at more junior lawyers who are one or two years out of law school to fill prosecutor positions, and would encourage them to apply.

Another problem lies within the specialized section dedicated to fraud in Essayli’s office.

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Essayli said the major fraud section in his office is at roughly half-staff, because many employees left after President Donald Trump took office or took DOGE buyouts. If he filled out the section, he said, the office would be able to prosecute “at least double or triple” the fraud cases.

He accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of allowing fraud in the “hundreds of billions of dollars” in California earlier Friday.

“I call him the fraud king for a reason,” Essayli said of Newsom. “He has reigned over billions and billions of dollars of fraud…it’s going to be into the hundreds of billions of dollars under his watch,” he said.

Essayli suggested the enormity of such alleged fraud will be difficult to tackle, but told The Post they’ll go with a “quantity over quality” approach to prosecute as many fraudsters as possible.

“So maybe we just do a bunch of the smaller frauds. Most frauds are not in the hundreds of millions. Most of the fraudsters are taking a few 100,000 or one or 2 million, that’s the majority of the fraudsters. But those numbers add up really quick when you multiply by the amount of people engaged in this,” he said.

Newsom’s office slammed Essayli earlier Friday for suggesting they played a part in allowing the fraud.

“The Governor took action: he instituted a BAN on new hospice licenses back in 2022!! Only the federal government has access to medicare billing, CRITICAL to fighting fraud — so why did it take you so long to act, First Assistant? Maybe time to talk to Dr Oz about following Governor Newsom and instituting a federal moratorium?” Newsom’s office wrote on X.

“There’s a reason Bill Essayli is First Assistant, not a US Attorney: It’s because he can’t get basic facts right,” they added.

The top prosecutor believes Newsom’s refusal to say there is widespread fraud in California is a “joke.”

“That’s a joke. They have their head in the sand,” Essayli told The Post.

“Because if the fraud, if they actually look into it and they realize the amount of hundreds of billions of dollars that go into fraud? I think it would be the end of a lot of people’s careers in Sacramento.”