WOODLAND, CA – Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, a longtime elected prosecutor known for his tough-on-crime stance, took to X (formerly Twitter) on November 2 to claim that California’s public assistance system has become “completely corrupted,” citing what he described as widespread fraud and weakened enforcement across state departments.
“It’s a fact that California has massive amounts of public assistance fraud,” Reisig wrote in the post. “As a long time elected DA near Sacramento, I’ve personally witnessed the deconstruction of meaningful law enforcement oversight of the departments that hand out billions of dollars in benefits.”
Reisig alleged that state leaders and senior administrators have dismantled anti-fraud efforts, “cut funding and staff for fraud investigations and even changed laws or policies to make it easier for people to steal thousands of dollars without any criminal consequence.” He added that “the budgets of those departments handing out assistance, staffed with union workers, swelled as the amount of money moving through exploded.”
“It’s completely corrupted in CA now,” Reisig concluded.
His comments came in response to a post by former Trump administration official Brooke Rollins, who served as acting head of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council and now leads the America First Policy Institute.
Rollins wrote, “On my first day @USDA, we told every state to send us their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families. 29 states stepped up. 21 blue states refused — and two SUED US FOR ASKING!”
Reisig’s post appeared to endorse Rollins’ assertion that Democratic-led states, including California, resist federal oversight of programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. The exchange reflects a broader national debate over the integrity of social safety net programs, particularly amid partisan divides on immigration, welfare oversight, and unionized state workforces.
Critics of such claims have often noted that public assistance fraud, while real, represents a small fraction of total benefits distributed nationwide. Studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have historically estimated fraud rates in the SNAP program at less than 1 percent of total benefits issued, and California’s Department of Social Services has repeatedly defended its anti-fraud units as effective and transparent.
Reisig did not cite data or specific cases to support his statement. The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office has not issued an official release expanding on his remarks.
The post drew mixed reactions on social media, with some users applauding Reisig for highlighting waste in government spending, while others criticized his comments as politically motivated and lacking evidence.
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Does anyone really doubt that there’s wide spread fraud occurring with our public assistance programs?
Yes. I doubt that there is widespread fraud. Especially with SNAP. It’s a pain to access and the payoff isn’t very much.
Seriously? How many people are on SNAP that get paid in cash and don’t report their earnings? How many undocumented immigrants are on SNAP who don’t qualify? And it’s not just SNAP, it’s about the fraud happening across all forms of public assistance.
Maybe some. But you don’t get that much money from SNAP and it’s pretty limited. You need to have evidence to make these kinds of claims, and neither the DA nor USDA provided it.
I agree that there is fraud happening across other areas. We saw during the pandemic, people were fraudulently receiving unemployment and PPP – but in some cases that was a lot of money – here you’re talking about a few hundred a month.
But the bigger problem from my perspective is people hacking your EBT card, what has Reisig done about that?