Californian Medicare Hospice Hustle Meets the Long Arm of the Law
President Trump’s Department of Justice recently arrested five California residents alleged to have participated in massive hospice fraud. This follows several high-level hospice fraud convictions and settlements secured by the administration, yielding significant jail time for the fraudsters and financial recoupment for taxpayers.
Lolita Beronilla Minerd, a licensed vocational nurse, was one of the five just arrested. According to court documents, Minerd owned and operated a hospice company from which she allegedly billed over $9.1 million in false claims to Medicare (collecting more than $8.5 million) from July 2020 to April 2025. Specifically, Minerd allegedly billed Medicare for hospice services for beneficiaries who were not terminally ill, and allegedly paid kickbacks to beneficiaries and marketers for the referral of purported hospice patients to her company. Her hospice had a non-death discharge rate of approximately 85 percent, whereas the national average in 2021 was 17.2 percent from 2021. (RELATED: Uncovered: The Power of the Citizen Journalist)
Another person arrested was Gladwin Gill, a purported psychologist, and his wife, Amelou Gill, a registered nurse. According to court documents, the Gills owned and operated a hospice company. The Gills allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by paying illegal kickbacks for the referral of patients who were not dying. The Gills allegedly submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services that either were not medically necessary or were not provided, for which Medicare paid them more than $4 million. The Gills then allegedly spent these funds on their personal mortgage payments, car payments, international flights, dining at restaurants, and bills. (RELATED: Washington’s Fraud Factory)
The third arrest was Nita Almuete Paddit Palma and her husband, Adolfo Cezar Catbagan, who are being charged with operating at least three fraudulent hospice care facilities. As alleged in the charges, from June 2022 to April 2024, Palma and Catbagan opened three hospice care facilities despite Palma being legally barred from doing so, given previous convictions of healthcare fraud. Catbagan was named the nominal owner and CEO of the three hospices when Palma, in fact, owned and exercised operating control over them — despite her exclusion — so that Medicare would not deny the companies’ claims. 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. Palma and Catbagan submitted at least $4.8 million in alleged false claims through these companies, with Medicare paying them at least $4.2 million.
The fourth arrest was of Evelyn Tindimobuna, a licensed vocational nurse. According to court documents, from January 2022 to September 2025, Tindimobuna allegedly used a hospice to submit to Medicare hundreds of fraudulent claims for purported hospice services to dozens of beneficiaries. For those claims, the hospice sought more than $3.8 million, of which Medicare paid approximately $3.4 million. Tindimobuna allegedly also paid kickbacks to marketers for their referral of hospice patients in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute.
The fifth arrest was Ivan Verne Lauritzen. According to court documents, Lauritzen was the CEO and CFO of a hospice whose Medicare enrollment was revoked in August 2024. In 2022, the live discharge rate of this hospice exceeded 75 percent, well above the national average that year of approximately 17 percent. Based on an audit examining claims from that hospice from August 2023 to March 2024, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) determined the company had a pattern and practice of submitting claims that failed to meet Medicare’s hospice standards and requirements. Lauritzen forged the signature of at least one physician on Medicare enrollment forms. The hospice in which Lauritzen worked billed Medicare more than $580,000 in allegedly fraudulent payments, of which Medicare paid over $526,000.
But those five arrests are only the most recent of the Trump administration’s wins against hospice fraud. (RELATED: Medicaid’s 30-Year Refusal to Stop Funding the Dead)
In March, a woman from Los Angeles was sentenced to 35 months in federal prison for defrauding Medicare out of more than $14.1 million by submitting claims for hospice care and diagnostic testing services that were either unnecessary or not provided at all. From March 2019 to August 2024, Shaklian and others used multiple fake hospice and diagnostic testing providers enrolled with Medicare and submitted fraudulent claims on behalf of companies she owned.
In January, a Dallas, Texas hospice provider agreed to pay $1.9 million to settle claims that it violated the Civil Monetary Penalties Law. The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services (OIG HHS) alleged that this provider billed for: (1) hospice services provided by “attending physicians” who were nurse practitioners, but billed as if they had been performed by physicians; and (2) “attending physician” services performed by an attending physician who was not the physician chosen by the patient or where the provider was not properly enrolled in Medicare.
In December 2025, two owners (husband and wife) of several Arizona wound graft companies were sentenced to 15.5 and 14 years in prison, respectively, for $1.2 billion in healthcare fraud and agreed to pay $309 million to resolve civil liability under the False Claims Act. Many of their patients were in hospice care and were receiving medically unnecessary wound grafts.
In May through November 2025, five California residents were sentenced to prison for defrauding Medicare of nearly $16 million through establishing fake hospice companies and laundering the proceeds. These include: Carlos Esparza, sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered to pay over $1.8 million in restitution in November 2025; Susanna Harutyunyan, sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of over $2.8 million in November 2025; Karpis Srapyan, sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of over $3.2 million in October 2025; Mihran Panosyan, sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of over $4.6 million in September 2025; and Petros Fichidzhyan, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay restitution of over $17.1 million in May 2025.
According to court documents, Esparza, Fichidzhyan, and Srapyan billed Medicare for hospice services that were medically unnecessary and never provided. From July 2019 until January 2023, these three co-defendants operated four fake hospices. Fichidzhyan, Esparza, and Srapyan concealed the scheme by using foreign nationals’ names and personally identifiable information to function as straw owners for the hospices and to open bank accounts, submit information to Medicare, and sign property leases. Fichidzhyan, Esparza, and Srapyan worked with Harutyunyan and Panosyan to launder the fraudulent proceeds. To do this, they set up fake identification documents and other documents associated with the sham hospices, as well as bank documents, checkbooks, and credit and debit cards in the names of purported foreign owners. After defrauding Medicare, the defendants moved the funds between various assets and accounts, including bank accounts in the names of shell companies.
In October 2025, seven residents of Houston, Texas, were arrested for alleged participation in hospice fraud. All seven defendants are alleged to have conspired to fraudulently bill Medicare and Medicaid for more than $110 million for hospice services provided to patients who were not terminally ill.
In June 2025, a Georgia hospice company and its affiliated entities settled for $9.2 million to resolve allegations that they entered into kickback arrangements with medical directors in exchange for referrals of hospice patients in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and the False Claims Act.
In February 2025, an Alabama healthcare company settled for $3 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting false claims for the care of hospice patients who were ineligible for the Medicare hospice benefit because they were not terminally ill.
In its continued battle against hospice fraud, the Trump administration continues to clinch arrests, convictions, and settlements. Hopefully, the administration will continue its efforts to secure the integrity of hospice in California and all other states.
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