California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office is reviewing reports that Mehmet Oz, better known from his reality career as Dr Oz, the US administrator of Medicare and Medicaid services, made ‘racially charged claims of fraud outside Armenian-owned businesses’ in Los Angeles.
‘Given the historic sensitivities involved, we are taking these allegations seriously’, Newson’s press office said on Wednesday.
‘Any and all acts of hate have no place in California’.
Newsom’s announcement came after Oz filmed a video showing him conducting an ‘investigation’ that consisted of unsubstantiated claims of widespread Medicaid fraud allegedly committed by the ‘Armenian–Russian mafia’ in Los Angeles.
The claims, and Oz’s comments as he drove around Los Angeles, were widely criticised both for their lack of supporting evidence and the many basic factual errors, such as calling Armenian writing ‘Cyrillic’ and implying an Armenian bakery was a base for mafia operations.
Nate Ostiller
Newsom’s office quickly pushed back against the claims, arguing the governor had cracked down on Medicaid fraud and other related violations in the state long before Oz had taken office. Newsom and other Democratic politicians have also cast the video as a partisan stunt aimed at a popular Democratic governor in a blue state, akin to similar claims about an alleged fraud network in Minnesota’s Somali community.
Moreover, both Newsom’s office and many Armenian–Americans characterised the ‘investigation’ as being racially targeted at Armenians. Others have said the video figured into a long history of anti-Armenian sentiment from Oz, who is a dual US–Turkish citizen and has been alleged to have links to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. During his unsuccessful bid for Senate in 2022, Oz’s repeated unwillingness to explicitly condemn the Armenian Genocide was highlighted by members of the Armenian community and others.
Rising condemnation as unsubstantiated claims are boosted
The video has received significant attention from Democratic members of Congress from California politicians and others, with many highlighting the ethnically-targeted aspect of Oz’s claims.
Representative Luz Rivas said the remarks were ‘racist’, while Representative Brad Sherman called them ‘abhorrent and discriminatory — but unfortunately unsurprising given his long history of denying the Armenian Genocide’.
The sentiment was echoed by Representative Laura Friedman, who said what Oz was doing was not ‘a fraud investigation — it’s ethnic profiling’.
‘We value the Armenian community, which has made countless positive impacts to California. Smearing an entire community is despicable’, she added.
At the same time, the claims were promoted on social media by conservative influencers, as well as Turkish and Azerbaijani media outlets. One such article, bearing the marks of being AI-generated and repeating the incorrect conflation of Armenian and Cyrillic writing, appeared in the Azerbaijani media outlet The Azeri Times.
As of Thursday, the impacts of Oz’s video have not just been limited to rhetorical smearing of Armenian–Americans.
Movses Bislamyan, the owner of the bakery that was prominently featured in the background of the video, told LA’s ABC7 that ‘customer traffic fell 30% in a single day after the video circulated’.
‘There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We’re just hard-working businessmen’, Bislamyan said.
‘I am really disappointed [they were] recording my signs, my location, and talking about some kind of fraud going on here. We have nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the grocery store’.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
