Photo from FBI
LOS ANGELES – Three Filipino Americans were among 15 defendants facing federal charges in Los Angeles as part of a crackdown on health care fraud schemes, including sham hospice facilities that pay people to pose as dying Medicare beneficiaries.
Eight of the 15 defendants were arrested in the investigation local law enforcement dubbed “Operation Never Say Die,” including 65-year-old Fil-Am nurse Lolita Beronilla Minerd, who owned and operated a hospice in Artesia, Calif.
According to court papers, Minerd, who lives in Anaheim, Calif., used her company over the last five years to submit more than $9.1 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, which paid her more than $8.5 million.
Photo from FBI
You may like: 2 Fil-Ams arrested for $4.8 million alleged hospice care fraud
Medicare beneficiaries
Through her company, Minerd allegedly billed Medicare for beneficiaries who were not dying. Investigators found that numerous beneficiaries had common addresses and lived far from the facility, a frequent sign of being recruited for such a scheme, federal prosecutors said.
One beneficiary couple linked to the scheme was approached at a market about signing up and then were visited at home by Minerd and three of her employees, who promised if the couple signed up everything would be free, and they each would receive $300 per month, court papers allege.
The money was delivered in an envelope in cash: $600 per month for six months. Neither beneficiary stated they had a terminal illness, which their physician confirmed. The couple also reported receiving unneeded items such as nutritional shakes, non-prescription vitamins, and wheelchairs, according to federal prosecutors.
The US Attorney’s Office stated that Minerd’s hospice had a non-death discharge rate of approximately 85%, nearly five times the national average of 17.2% from 2021.
Fil-Am couple
Among those facing charges are 76-year-old Nita Almuete Paddit Palma and her husband Adolfo Cezar Catbagan, 68, of Glendale, Calif. They are charged in an 11-count indictment with operating at least three fraudulent hospice care facilities.
Law enforcement arrested Catbagan last week.
Palma, a lawful permanent resident from the Philippines and described by the US Attorney’s Office as “a thrice-convicted health care fraudster” has been detained at a federal prison in Seattle.
According to the indictment, from June 2022 to April 2024, Palma and Catbagan opened three Glendale-based hospice care facilities despite Palma being legally barred from doing so: One Up Hospice Care Inc., Rosewood Hospice and Palliative Care Inc. and Advance Hospice and Palliative Care Inc.
Catbagan was named as the owner and CEO of the three hospices when Palma, in fact, “owned and exercised operating control of them – despite her exclusion – so Medicare would not deny the companies’ claims,” according to the indictment.
“The defendants submitted false claims to Medicare for beneficiaries who were not terminally ill and the physicians supposedly providing hospice services did not treat the patients,” the US Attorney’s Office said,
Palma and Catbagan submitted at least $4.8 million in fraudulent claims through these companies, resulting in Medicare payments of at least $4.2 million.
Health care fraud
“The Southern California region is a high-risk environment for hospice-related and many other forms of health care fraud,” said Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau. “The United States loses hundreds of billions of dollars annually to health care fraud at the expense of all American taxpayers, whose benefits decrease as premiums, co-payments and taxes grow. Our aim is to reverse that trend with `Operation Never Say Die’ and others like it.”
Health care fraud-related charges in the cases carry a possible sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison, prosecutors said.
The charges were announced at a news conference Thursday in downtown Los Angeles in conjunction with a new national anti-fraud task force.
Crackdown on fraud
Vice President JD Vance recently held the inaugural meeting of the initiative as the Trump administration seeks to show it’s cracking down on misuse of social programs.
“Hospice is an entirely different level of fraud,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom for the problem, saying the governor is reigning over a “kingdom of fraud” and refuses to adopt emergency regulations to root out health care lawbreakers.
Newsom responded on social media that new hospice licenses in the state were banned in 2021, and at least 280 licenses have been revoked in the last two years. He said that more than 100 criminal cases dealing with hospice fraud have been filed by state prosecutors.
“The Trump Administration — home to the biggest fraudsters on Earth — is trying to blame California for issues with THEIR federal programs,”
Newsom wrote. “Glad to see the Feds finally taking seriously the fraud in the programs they themselves manage … only 15 months after Trump took office.”
The post Fil-Ams among 15 charged in hospice fraud crackdown in California appeared first on USNewsRank.
Discover more from USNewsRank
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.