The owners of two California hospices and a dozen of their employees have been charged in connection with a Medicare scam that allegedly bilked the California Medicaid program and Medicare out of $4.2 million dollars.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the owners of San Bernardino-based New Hope Hospice and Sterling Hospice Care, along with their employees, enrolled patients who were not terminally ill into hospice care between 2015 and 2021. The criminal complaint said patients were either enrolled in hospice without their knowledge or didn’t understand what hospice is.
“End-of-life care is a difficult process for families to endure, and patients should be able to trust that their hospice providers are acting in good faith,” Bonta said in a press release.
The complaint claims Ralph Canales, Rochelle Paragados, Giovanni Ibale and Maureen Ibale operated the two businesses and included physicians, nurses and other employees in the scheme that admitted patients into hospice illegally. The defendants then received kickbacks from money paid for patient care by Medicare and Medi-Cal.
The attorney general’s office described a complex system that included stealing patients’ identities and moving patients from one hospice to the other to avoid detection by state and federal agencies.
The defendants face multiple felony charges including conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, insurance fraud, grand theft, and submitting fraudulent insurance claims. Some of the defendants have also been charged with identity theft, money laundering and tax evasion. Two of the defendants remain at large.
The investigation was led by the California Department of Justice with assistance from the California Employment Development Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General.
