NEW YORK (AP) — Federal authorities charged a dozen people Tuesday for fraudulently collecting more than $10 million in government childcare payments in Southern California, 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 were operating licensed, at-home childcare facilities in the San Diego area, 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.
The federally funded childcare assistance programs are intended to help low-income families afford childcare so parents can work or go to school. After parents are accepted in the program, they select a childcare provider and the government reimburses the provider directly. But they don’t get enough money to cover all eligible families, forcing many eligible parents on growing waitlists.
It is this federally funded program that led to these defendants to operate these “ghost” daycares, prosecutors said.
“There were no children," Colin McDonald, head of the Justice Department's fraud enforcement division, told a news conference. “There were no daycares. But the taxpayers were paying for all of it.”
The department's fraud division was created in April and this was the first indictment of its type since.
All 12 defendants were arrested Thursday and the charges against them were unsealed Tuesday. Prosecutors said the investigation continues.
Federal prosecutors say 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 away, prosecutors say.
Another defendant, Abdulrahman Alawad, 25, claimed to provide childcare to children in March and April but surveillance footage allegedly shows children entered Alawad’s facility only once, on the day a state inspector showed up. Alawad is alleged to have received more than $300,000 in payments from childcare programs in 2025.
Other defendants collected more than $1 million in childcare subsidy payments, prosecutors said. Jared Koopman, head of the IRS criminal investigations division, told reporters the defendants then used the proceeds to purchase luxury homes, send money overseas through wire transfers, and make large cash withdrawals.
“These are taxpayer-funded programs designed to help working families, children and vulnerable communities," Koopman said. “When those funds are diverted for personal profit, families lose, honest providers lose, taxpayers lose and the public trust in these programs is damaged."
While several of the defendants have similar last names, the Justice Department's McDonald told reporters each investigation and indictment was reached independently.
The indictments in California have similarities to what happened with Minnesota-based Feeding Our Future. Federal prosecutors charged Feeding Our Future with scamming Minnesota and federal taxpayers out of millions of dollars of childcare and meal subsidies.
The alleged daycare fraud case in California is larger than the one with Feeding Our Future, which submitted roughly $4.6 million in claims to the childcare assistance program. However, the Feeding Our Future case was much more focused on fraud in meal subsidy programs than childcare.
The operator of the Feeding Our Future’s childcare facility, Fahima Mahamud, 50, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud charges in July. The facility's leader, Aimee Bock, was convicted and sentenced to nearly 42 years in prison in May for fraud and conspiracy charges. She has appealed her conviction. Nearly 80 people have been charged and dozens have been convicted since federal authorities announced their first indictments related to the fraud happening at Feeding Our Future in 2022.
The Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations Division had been investigating these childcare facilities going back to at least February. While the IRS is mostly known for the enforcement of tax law, the investigations division is one of the arms of the federal government that often focuses on white-collar crimes.
The Trump administration has put a heavy emphasis on investigating and charging alleged fraud and abuse of government benefit programs. Vice President JD Vance chairs the administration’s task force on the effort. McDonald said the public should expect more investigations and indictments in the coming months.
But some of their efforts have faced criticism and legal challenges. In December, Vance amplified a YouTube video of a popular right-wing influencer accusing childcare providers of running scams. State authorities visited the centers and found nearly all of them operating normally. Nonetheless, the administration used the specter of fraud to launch an unprecedented immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Officials later attempted to freeze federal funds for childcare in five Democratic-led states, but were halted by a lawsuit.
Associated Press writer Moriah Balingit contributed to this report from Washington.
U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon announces charges against a dozen individuals for fraudulently collecting childcare payments during a press event, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
The loved ones of the 67 people who died last year when an airliner and Army helicopter collided over Washington, D.C., urged Congress and regulators Tuesday to do more now to prevent other families from being left clutching belongings and memories instead of their wives and children.
Several of the victims' families joined with top lawmakers and the head of the National Transportation Safety Board outside the U.S. Capitol to demand action, but it may be difficult for this Congress to pass anything ahead of the midterm elections. And lawmakers are still trying to draft a compromise bill that will combine elements of the competing proposals that previously passed the House and Senate.
Doug Lane said he has the U.S. figure skating jacket that his son Spencer worked so hard to earn and pieces of his wife Christine's laptop that were retrieved from the wreckage after their plane plunged into the icy Potomac River in the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since 2001. Everyone aboard was killed when the American Airlines jet from Wichita, Kansas, and the Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission collided. The victims included 28 members of the figure skating community.
The FAA quickly restricted helicopter traffic around Reagan National Airport when it became clear that a helicopter route in the approach path of the airport's secondary runway didn’t ensure enough separation between helicopters and planes. But the NTSB remains unsatisfied with the FAA's response to a third of the 33 safety recommendations it received.
FAA Administrator Brian Bedford testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday that his staff will work to address those concerns, but he also needs guidance from Congress.
Already, steps have been taken to prevent helicopters and planes from sharing the same airspace around Reagan airport, and air traffic controllers are now prohibited from relying only on pilots to see other aircraft and avoid them.
But concerning incidents continue to happen, such as when an airline jet was allowed to take off just as President Donald Trump's helicopter was taking off from the White House last month.
Lane and many other victims' families traveled to Washington D.C. time after time in the 595 days since the crash, pushing for changes that he hopes will be approved before the tragedy that cut his family in half fades any further from the headlines.
“We can tell them stories, we can ask questions. We can push for answers. We can take action. That’s the work that belongs to us. But we cannot do anybody else’s work for them,” Lane said. “We need the people with the power to turn this tragedy into change to do theirs and to finish it.”
Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell and NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said it would be a shame to reach the second anniversary of the crash that happened on Jan. 29, 2025 without Congress passing the reforms her agency recommended and the Federal Aviation Administration and Defense Department making more safety improvements. Cruz said he hopes Congress will be able to pass a bill during the lame duck session that will follow November's elections.
Rachel Feres, who lost her cousin and his wife and two young daughters in the crash, said she can’t believe there's still debate about whether pilots transporting hundreds of passengers should have the best collision-avoidance technology available, when most modern cars come equipped with arrays of sensors to check blind spots and even apply the brakes in an emergency.
Feres and the other families have been surprised at the amount of lobbying against requiring all planes flying in crowded airspace to be equipped with existing technology that can help pilots know the location of all other aircraft flying nearby. Homendy has said those ADS-B In systems would have prevented this crash. Some airlines have endorsed them, but cost concerns from other airlines and private plane owners have been a stumbling block.
The airlines have the money and power to get this done, Feres said. “This is not about whether you can afford to act ... you have the leverage, you have the voice. The question is why safety so rarely gets the same urgency as the next quarterly earnings report.”
“Do the thing you would demand if your wife and son were on that airplane. Do what you would do if your granddaughter was traveling home with her teddy bear. You know how to move fast when money is on the line. Move fast when lives are,” Feres said.
The safety reforms stalled earlier this year when the narrower Senate bill came up one vote short in the House after the military reversed course and opposed it at the last minute. And lawmakers have had troubling reconciling the Senate bill with the more comprehensive House version that took a different approach on several key points.
Homendy said the victims' families deserve to see more action.
“We can’t spend another moment looking them in the eye and doing nothing. We have to. We have an obligation," Homendy said. “We owe it to these families. We owe it to passengers. We owe it to the traveling public. We owe it to cargo pilots and so much more to improve safety now.”
Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report from Des Moines, Iowa.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy speaks about flight 5342, the deadly Jan. 2025 midair collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, during a news conference on air safety reforms at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Family members of the victims of flight 5342, the deadly Jan. 2025 midair collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, listen during a news conference as they call for Congress to pass aviation safety reforms at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, speaks about his efforts to pass aviation safety reforms in the wake of the deadly Jan. 2025 midair collision between an American Airlines plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy, center, helps to comfort Christina Stovall, center with back to camera, and Laura Augendre, right, family members of victims of flight 5342, the deadly Jan. 2025 midair collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, during a news conference on air safety reforms, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
