“Taxpayer-funded programs should protect our children, not funnel them towards irreversible medical interventions that make them patients for life,” said citizen journalist Melissa O’Connor.
Fraud has become an uncomfortable topic across the nation lately, and that’s doubly true in California. Further, it’s a white hot topic in the Golden State’s major cities, including San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Just this week, an L.A. man running a nonprofit specializing in rendering services for homeless individuals was arrested and charged with fleecing $23 million in public funds.
Much of what we now know about widespread fraud with regard to social services comes to light not because of the mainstream media but because of citizen journalists willing to get their hands dirty, put in public records requests, and uncover how public dollars move with very little visibility. Among them is Melissa O’Connor, whose investigative work has focused on exposing closed-loop pipelines between taxpayer-funded NGOs and San Diego’s institutions.
“California’s fraud is deliberately hidden within a complex web of tax-exempt ‘nonprofit’ NGOs and foundations designed to move public money beyond public scrutiny,” said O’Connor. “In San Diego County alone, I’ve traced federal grants flowing to the state, then the county, and finally into local NGOs driven by ideology, nor accountability. These groups pass millions to allied nonprofits or favored contractors, perpetuating the same cycle.”
In particular, she believes she has uncovered “glaring conflicts of interest” between UC San Diego, Rady Children’s Hospital, an NGO, and public schools.
Central to this story is the relationship between two women, whistleblowers say: social worker Rai Khamisa, who evaluates and approves patients for certain surgical procedures, and Dr. Priya Lewis, a plastic surgeon known locally for performing double mastectomies on minors. Community insiders allege that they have documented instances where individuals with documented mental health challenges were approved for irreversible procedures, later exhibiting severe psychological distress afterward.
Allegedly, reports of the inappropriate relationship between Khamisa and Lewis were brought to the attention of UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Dr. Amanda Gosman, Chief of the school’s Division of Plastic Surgery. But no action has been taken.
Lewis was a speaker at UC San Diego’s 6th Annual Transgender Health Care Symposium last year. Her lecture, titled “Bottom Surgery: Decision Making and Surgical Techniques,” focused on the functions of a “neovagina” and “neophallus.” More importantly, O’Connor—who was in attendance—alleges that one panelist allegedly said that she would “repurpose federal funds to preserve gender-affirming care if its own funding was at risk” due to the Trump administration’s stance on the matter.
“They openly discuss bending the truth to secure federal funding, they push for unfettered access to children, and their greatest fear is exactly this—articles that expose them or leaked clips of their meetings going viral,” she said, describing conversations at the event.
Adding to the scrutiny is TransFamily Support Services (TFSS), a nonprofit run by Kathie Moehlig (who authorized her daughter, Sam Moehlig, to transition and get a double mastectomy at age fourteen) that, according to O’Connor’s reporting, appears to be “embedded with [San Diego’s] school districts,” having participated in LGBTQ+ events at San Diego schools going back to at least 2016. There, TFSS “targets and recruits” children “via school counselors and after-school clubs to gleefully guide them to the mutilation,” according to O’Connor.
TFSS states publicly that it provides coaching, healthcare navigation, family support, and school assistance at no fee to clients. In many cases, those clients become lifelong or near-lifelong patients at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego as they seek gender affirming care, hormone therapies, and—possibly—surgeries.
To that end, when Rady’s Center for Gender-Affirming Care—which is under federal investigation—announced last week it would be closing its doors, TFSS and affiliate groups encouraged dozens to protest publicly outside of the hospital.
According to county financial records cited by O’Connor, TFSS has received over $300,000 in public funds from San Diego County in recent years. Of that, tens of thousands of dollars reportedly went to “community enhancement grants,” including internal salaries and facilitator stipends. O’Connor questions why taxpayer dollars are underwriting what she calls internal payroll expansion at a “radical advocacy group.”
“Taxpayer-funded programs should protect our children, not funnel them towards irreversible medical interventions that make them patients for life,” O’Connor said, emphasizing her concerns about long-term impacts and the use of public dollars.
O’Connor’s concerns for San Diego are not theoretical—fraud has already shown up in San Diego in cases with clear financial paper trails (and legal consequences). In 2024, multiple nonprofit organizations, including country clubs and homeowners associations in the region, agreed to pay over $5.8 million to resolve allegations that they fraudulently obtained federal Paycheck Protection Program loans during the COVID-19 pandemic. One such case involved a homeowners association that acknowledged collecting $1.5 million in relief funds it was not eligible for and later repaid the loan along with significant penalties.
And, while not directly accused of wrongdoing, other San Diego organizations like the United Women of East Africa and the San Diego Foundation are facing sharp criticism—to say the least—for reporting discrepancies, inability to produce certain records, and general lack of transparency.
“When officials are asked where the money went or whether services were delivered, the answer is almost always the same: it was outsourced. The state or county claims ignorance and absolves itself of responsibility. This is how BILLIONS OF DOLLARS have DISAPPEARED in California,” O’Connor said.
But what can concerned citizens do about it?
“Search San Diego County contracts and see where it takes you,” she said. “File a public records request and start investigating.”
