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California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office filed a civil rights complaint against Dr. Mehmet Oz, accusing him of discriminating against Armenians in a social media video that claimed hospice fraud in Los Angeles, according to the complaint filed Thursday.

Newsom’s office said Oz’s statements were racially charged and that they risked chilling participation in hospice and home-care programs that rely on government-subsidized insurance administered through the federal Medicare system. In the complaint, Newsom’s office also argued the remarks had already caused real-world harm, pointing to dampened business at the Armenian bakery shown in Oz’s video.

The dispute centers on a video Oz posted on social media from outside an Armenian bakery in Los Angeles. In the video, Oz alleged that about $3.5 billion in hospice and home-care fraud had taken place in the city and he said “quite a bit of it” was run by “the Russian Armenian mafia.”

Oz also posted on X accusing Newsom of trying to change the subject rather than addressing Medicare fraud, according to the report. Oz, who serves as the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which certifies hospice providers to accept patients on government-subsidized health insurance, said he believed the problem “is the worst” in California but said it “isn’t isolated to California.”

Newsom’s office argued in the complaint that Oz “spewed baseless and racially charged allegations,” and that the claims had “already caused real-world harm” by dampening business at the bakery shown in the video. The complaint described Oz’s allegations as risking reduced involvement in hospice and home-care programs by people in the Armenian community targeted by his remarks.

In response to Oz’s video, Movses Bislamyan, whose family-owned bakery appears in it, told KABC-TV that there was no “Armenian mafia” at issue. “Mafia? There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We’re just hardworking business owners. I don’t understand why he’s mentioning just Armenians,” Bislamyan said.

The video depicts Oz visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood and pointing to a four-block radius he said was home to 42 hospices. Oz also referenced a business he said was part of a $16 million fraud scheme and described the Armenian script on business signs while the camera panned to the bakery.

Armenian-American leaders criticized Oz’s remarks as scapegoating. Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, said Oz’s comments invoked “easy stereotypes” about the Armenian community and criticized him for what Hamparian described as a “destructive direction” that scapegoats Armenians, according to the report. Hamparian said, “Things have been dealt with at the state level, prosecutions have been made,” but that Oz was taking an “entirely destructive direction by scapegoating, by fear-mongering, by staging the theatric collective indictment of all Armenians.”

Hamparian’s comments came as the Armenian community’s Los Angeles-area presence is concentrated across Los Angeles County, with more than 200,000 people of Armenian descent estimated to live there. April is observed as Armenian History Month, and a small section of Los Angeles is known as Little Armenia; Glendale, about 15 miles from where Oz recorded the video, is also described as a center of the community.

The feud comes amid a broader fight between Newsom and the Trump administration. The report said the dispute has included battles over federal actions in Los Angeles and over the Trump administration’s efforts to block California’s 2035 ban on new gas-powered cars.

The clash also follows statements by Newsom earlier in the week acknowledging hospice fraud in California. He said the state has worked for years to crack down on it, and his office said he signed a 2021 law to stop providing new hospice licenses over fraud concerns, while the state has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses in recent years and is examining another 300 hospices for possible fraud.