NEW YORK – Federal authorities charged a dozen people Tuesday for fraudulently collecting more than $10 million in government childcare payments, when the operators had few or even no actual children attending their facilities.
The charges, jointly announced in San Diego by the Justice Department and the criminal investigations division of the IRS, are the latest effort by the Trump administration to investigate and charge alleged cases of fraud and waste in government programs.
The 12 defendants said they operated licensed, at-home childcare facilities in Southern California, submitting attendance records and documenting when each child attended and for what times, in order to collect payments from government childcare subsidy programs. However federal prosecutors say these at-home facilities rarely, if ever, had children. Defendants fraudulently collected from government programs for months or, in some cases, years, prosecutors said.
All 12 defendants were arrested Thursday and the charges against them were unsealed Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors say that some of the defendants were not even in the country when they were submitting claims for childcare payments. One defendant, Turkiya Alawad, 63, was found to be outside the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2024, and Jan. 30, 2024, but at the same time, submitted and collected for childcare payments for the dates they were not away, prosecutors say.