Los Angeles– Federal authorities on Thursday arrested eight people they say were involved in various health care fraud schemes totaling $50 million in and around Los Angeles.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the five cases involved hospice-care centers in the Los Angeles area cities of Glendale, Artesia, Tarzana and Simi Valley that allegedly billed Medicare for patients who were not terminally ill and did not qualify for hospice services. One man was arrested in Idaho and another in L.A. on charges of defrauding a West Coast labor union’s health care plans. An additional person arrested in LA was charged with falsifying immigration medical documents.
The Trump administration has made California, and particularly the Los Angeles area, the center of its national anti-fraud efforts, charging that the Democratic-led state has failed to crack down on improper spending.
Trump-appointed First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli called California a “fraud empire” during a press conference announcing the charges.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said the state has already aggressively cracked down on hospice fraud, noting that he signed a law in 2021 to stop granting new hospice licenses over fraud concerns. The office also said the state has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses in two years and 300 providers are under investigation.
“Glad the federal government is finally stepping up to do its job,” Newsom wrote in an op-ed. post on x.
The administration has uncovered fraud nationwide in federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March anti fraud task force Led by Vice President J.D. Vance, they met for the first time last week. However, most efforts are focused on Democrat-run states. Republican-led Florida were among those asked to share more information about the detection, prevention and resolution of Medicaid fraud.
“We are enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for criminals who defraud the American taxpayer,” Essaly said in a statement announcing the California charges.
Dr. Mehmet Oz said during a press conference that federal authorities had “taken out” 221 hospices over the past 10 weeks. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which Oz runs, did not immediately respond to an email seeking more information about what it includes. CMS certifies that the hospital offers facilities to accept patients with government subsidized health insurance.
“We’re going to review every single hospice in California,” Oz said.
In January, Oz posted a video An Armenian bakery in Los Angeles alleged on social media that the city was defrauded of nearly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care and that a “substantial portion” of it was run by the “Russian Armenian Mafia.” This led to a civil rights complaint by Newsom’s office, which said Oz had targeted Armenians with “baseless and racist allegations.”
Oz’s agency also announced that it is proposing a new, publicly available hospice scoring system using care metrics to better identify facilities that may be illegitimate.
The largest Medicare fraud case announced Thursday involved an Artesia-based hospice center whose owner submitted more than $9 million in fraudulent hospice claims to Medicare, and was paid out more than $8.5 million on the claims, prosecutors said.
The owner paid beneficiaries and marketers to refer alleged hospice patients to his company. One couple said they were promised $300 a month to sign up for hospice care, even though they didn’t need it, and they received unnecessary things like nutritional shakes, non-prescription vitamins and a wheelchair, prosecutors said.
Another man charged in the new hospice fraud case is currently serving a federal prison sentence in Seattle after pleading guilty in a previous hospice fraud case in December 2024. Her husband was arrested as a co-defendant on Thursday morning.
Authorities also announced charges against a Los Angeles nurse who used a hospice center in Tarzana to submit more than $3.8 million in claims, of which Medicare paid about $3.4 million. He has not been arrested yet.
Court dates have not been set and it was not immediately clear whether any of those arrested had legal representation.
