JUST IN: Trump Admin Fraud Taskforce Begins Raids Against Healthcare Fraudsters Across Southern California – UPDATE: 8 Arrested and Charged for Over $50 MILLION in Fraud (VIDEO)
UPDATE: The DOJ announced in a press release, “Eight defendants, including three nurses, a chiropractor, and a psychologist, have been arrested on federal charges that they schemed to defraud the nation’s health care system out of more than $50 million.” This includes arrests for Medicare hospice care fraud, private health care plan fraud, and immigration health care fraud.
“Six of the defendants arrested today are expected to make their initial appearances this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles. One defendant is expected to make his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Idaho,” the release reads.
Federal authorities have begun raids against businesses defrauding federal taxpayers in Southern California as the White House Fraud Task Force’s nationwide crackdown begins.
President Trump signed an executive order last month establishing the anti-fraud task force to investigate and root out the massive fraud in federally funded welfare programs across the country.
Chaired by Vice President JD Vance, with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson as Vice Chairman, “the Task Force will coordinate measures to improve eligibility verification, implement pre-payment controls, detect high-risk fraud trends, and disrupt and dismantle fraud networks and the mechanisms through which fraud is committed,” according to the order.
Trump previously announced during his State of the Union speech last month that Vance would lead his administration’s “war on fraud.” Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson will serve as the task force’s Vice Chairman.
Per Fox, at least two California hospice care businesses were raided by FBI agents on Thursday morning, and multiple arrests were made.
In one scheme, St. Francis Palliative Care is accused of admitting ineligible patients while billing the government $30,000 per patient. Per CBS, the owners billed Medicare $7.45 million, and the survival rate of patients was discovered to be 97% after five years, a red flag for a hospice care provider, whose patients are typically terminally ill.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli told Fox News, “They’ve been bilking the taxpayers for over $7 million, close to $8 million, and it’s all total, fraudulent hospice services. They were signing up people who are not terminally ill, they were forging the documents, the medical records, and they were collecting taxpayer dollars.”
He continued, “They’ve been charged, and this morning, they were arrested.”
The hospice patients “don’t seem to ever pass away,” Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz, said.
In another raid, Topenga Hospice was allegedly paying patients $600 per month while the government gave the business $6000 per month. They were also reportedly paying marketers to find Seniors to steal from Medicare using their information.
Each scheme is reported to have stolen about $8 million.
WATCH:
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Vice President Vance, the chairman of the White House Fraud Task Force, signaled in an interview last week that California would be targeted in their probe and that politicians who are complicit in these schemes could be prosecuted.
Of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Vance said, “We’re now going to investigate it, and if he committed a crime, we’re absolutely going to prosecute it.”
“They know that fraud happens in both our voting system, but also our welfare system, way more often than they let on,” he said of California politicians and Gavin Newsom.
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