A total of 13 Los Angeles County employees from seven different agencies were charged each with one felony count of grand theft and one lesser misdemeanor offense for stealing a combined $437,383 in state unemployment benefits between 2020 and 2023, the latest headline-grabbing scandal for the Board of Supervisors.
The charges were announced by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, whose own budget was slashed by $25 million for fiscal year 2025-2026, forcing a hiring freeze. In a letter to his employees in late August, Hochman wrote that the cuts came “over my repeated and vehement objections at the highest levels of County government.”
The investigation into the county employees’ COVID unemployment began after the findings from Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller’s Office of County Investigation uncovered a staggering $1.7 million in taxpayer-funded losses due to either county employee fraud or bad actors using county employees’ identifications, Hochman said…