Overview
- California’s attorney general has filed 119 hospice fraud cases since 2021 and this month charged 21 people in a $267 million scheme.
- State health officials say they have revoked 280 hospice licenses over two years and are reviewing 300 more as new screening, ownership limits, and staffing rules await approval.
- Federal prosecutors announced separate arrests in California and accused a Pasadena clinic of billing Medicare more than $34 million for care it did not provide.
- Fraudulent hospice enrollments have blocked seniors from routine treatment, including a reported case where a woman died after being listed in hospice despite needing cataract surgery.
- Scammers steal Medicare numbers, use brokers to sell beneficiary IDs, set up sham agencies, and even use stolen clinician identities, underscoring weak data sharing between state and federal systems.