California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office has demanded a civil rights investigation into Dr. Mehmet Oz, alleging he discriminated against Armenians in a video claiming widespread hospice fraud in Los Angeles.
The Democratic governor’s complaint, filed on Thursday, came after Dr. Oz posted a social media video filmed outside an Armenian bakery in Los Angeles. In the footage, Dr. Oz, who serves as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, alleged that roughly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care fraud had taken place in the city, with “quite a bit of it” supposedly run by “the Russian Armenian mafia.”
Newsom’s office argued in the complaint that Dr. Oz “spewed baseless and racially charged allegations” which risked deterring the targeted community from participating in crucial hospice and home care programs. They added that the claims had “already caused real-world harm” by dampening business at the Armenian bakery featured in the video.
Movses Bislamyan, whose family owns the bakery, told KABC-TV: “Mafia? There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We’re just hardworking business owners. I don’t understand why he’s mentioning just Armenians.”
The demand for an investigation represents the latest point of contention between California and federal officials.
Oz and CMS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint or the content of the video, and they haven’t publicly shared details about the fraud being alleged.
Oz’s video also points to a larger Trump administration effort to spotlight fraud around the country. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.
Earlier in the week, Newsom acknowledged fraud in hospice care in California but said the state has been working for years to crack down on it. He noted he signed a law in 2021 to stop providing new hospice licenses over fraud concerns and said the state has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses in recent years. Another 300 hospices are being examined for possible fraud, Newsom’s office said. The state did not immediately provide a list of all businesses that have had their licenses revoked.
“We’ve identified and cracked down on hospice fraud for years, taking real action to protect patients and taxpayers,” Newsom said in a statement.
Oz’s video shows him visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and pointing to a four-block radius that he says is home to 42 hospices, suggesting potential fraud. He references a business that he says was part of a $16 million fraud scheme. Oz describes the Armenian script on the businesses’ signs while the camera pans to the bakery.
“You notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect,” says Oz, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. He also claims there “has not been a lot of attention on these problems” in California.
Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, said Oz’s comments invoke “easy stereotypes” about the Armenian community, which has deep roots in California.
More than 200,000 people of Armenian descent are estimated to live in Los Angeles County, where April is celebrated as Armenian History Month. A small section of Los Angeles is known as Little Armenia, and the suburban city of Glendale, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from where Oz recorded the video, is a center of the community.
Hamparian said Oz’s connections to Turkey are concerning. That nation’s government does not acknowledge the killing and deportation of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 1900s, known as the Armenian genocide.
“Things have been dealt with at the state level, prosecutions have been made,” Hamparian said. “But Dr. Oz is taking this in an entirely destructive direction by scapegoating, by fear-mongering, by staging the theatric collective indictment of all Armenians.”
Turkey and Armenia have long been strained by historic grievances and Turkey’s alliance with Azerbaijan. The neighboring countries have no formal diplomatic ties, and their joint border has remained closed since the 1990s, though late last year they agreed to simplify visa procedures in an effort to normalize ties.
The feud is among many that have sprung up between Newsom, seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate for 2028, and the Republican administration of President Donald Trump. Newsom and Trump have clashed over issues ranging from the federal administration’s National Guard deployment in Los Angeles to the president’s efforts to block California’s 2035 ban on new gas-powered cars, a nationwide first.
