California has become a magnet for illegal immigrant fraud, as I've reported before, says investigative reporter Susan Crabtree. If you start a nonprofit and you say you're providing illegal immigrant services, then the California government will start channeling money to you. It was unbelievable what I exposed (https://www.city-journal.org/article/california-gavin-newsom-illegal-immigrants-ice) in the story I did with Chris Rufo's team at the Manhattan Institute.

On the latest episode of On Background with Susan Crabtree, she and co-host Eric Eggers of the Government Accountability Institute detail the most recent fraud investigations being done by journalists, the emerging problem of Chinese-owned cannabis farms in northern California, and Newsom's lack of response to it all.

They start by riffing on CNN's new interview with Newsom by correspondent Jake Tapper. While apologizing for his poor casting skills, Tapper asked no probing questions of the governor of the most populous state in the nation, instead discussing Newsom's presidential ambitions over the babble of a Montana trout stream.

We're on opposite sides of the country, behind our desks and in front of our cameras, quips Eggers. Apparently, the best way to have an authentic conversation about what government looks like is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a stream doing some fly fishing in Montana.

Jokes aside, journalist and former private investigator Amy Reichert has reported on ghost daycare centers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Xyg50KF10) in San Diego, similar to the infamous Quality Learing [sic] Center fraud investigation in Minneapolis that was done by YouTube citizen reporter Nick Shirley.

Amy started putting up her videos of on-the-ground reporting where she went into these so-called daycare centers, Crabtree explains. There were houses with chain link fences and there were fancy cars, and they were defrauding people of millions and millions of dollars.

Twelve people were arrested by federal law enforcement at ten ghost daycares in San Diego County (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/twelve-individuals-charged-10m-home-daycare-fraud-schemes), my county. There were a lot of Somalis, a lot of Middle Easterners, Crabtree tells Eggers. Amy was one of the first people to say that. She was the one.

I looked into it and she had the goods. Crabtree notes the area's main newspaper, the San Diego Union Tribune, previously implied (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/01/11/you-do-your-work-with-fear-san-diego-child-care-providers-on-edge-amid-harassment-funding-threat/) she was a racist for going after these ghost daycares. But she was absolutely right, and she was vindicated this week along with Nick Shirley.

What's more of a scandal? asks Eggers. The fact that you had these immigrants claiming to be caring for people with these ghost daycares, or that the government agencies, whose job it is to stop things like this, knew that there were no children present at these facilities and didn't say anything?

Meanwhile, a different problem is growing up north in Siskiyou County near Mt. Shasta. Thousands of acres of farmland have been bought and turned into cannabis farms by shell companies (https://www.city-journal.org/article/california-china-marijuana-siskiyou) traced to Chinese organized criminal gangs, known as the Triads, often with support from the Chinese Communist regime. Crabtree cites the reporting of Rufo and Haley Strack for exposing the scheme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6vJRBubncc&t=265s), in which Chinese and other illegal pot growers rake in billions of dollars per year, and terrorize the rural community with shootings, gang violence, and trafficking (https://krcrtv.com/news/local/siskiyou-illegal-marijuana-sites-linked-to-chinese-migrant-labor-trafficking).