Overview
- The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it has opened a Northeast Health Care Fraud Strike Force office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to base a new Philadelphia operation.
- Federal and Pennsylvania prosecutors charged 19 people in cases alleging more than $4 million in false Medicare and Medicaid home‑health claims.
- The charged defendants include home‑health company owners, employees, purported aides and Medicaid recipients, according to DOJ filings.
- Prosecutors say the schemes involved billing for care while aides were jailed, hospitalized, working elsewhere or traveling overseas, submitting overlapping or impossible hours including more than 24 hours in a day, and falsified clock‑ins and clock‑outs.
- The Philadelphia strike force will pair the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and work with HHS‑OIG, the FBI and the DEA, following wider strike‑force growth that prosecutors say tracked billions in alleged losses in 2025 and 2026 and that could mean more coordinated probes, audits and recoveries for providers and patients.