WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Federal authorities announced on Thursday the arrest of multiple people in Southern California in connection with a massive healthcare fraud takedown targeting sham hospice facilities. <\/p>\n
The defendants allegedly cheated Medicare out of millions of dollars. Called ‘Operation Never Say Die,\u2019 Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media, the fraudsters stole over $50 million from Americans.<\/p>\n
We need to get serious and we don’t see that happening in California. The ecosystem is rotten. We’ve uncovered lots of other derivatives that happen when you don’t take care of this problem in the way it needs to be done,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.<\/p>\n
Two of the people arrested, Gladwin and Amelou Gill, are accused of creating a hospice in their daughter’s name and allegedly swindling over $7 million from taxpayers.<\/p>\n
It’s all total fraudulent hospice services. They were signing out people who were not terminally ill. They were forging the documents, the medical records,” U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli told Fox News Thursday.<\/p>\n
Citing multiple HHS officials, investigative journalist Christopher Rufo with City Journal reported that California’s fraud rate is about 25%, or $50 billion of the state’s total Medicaid budget. Which, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, is right around $200 billion. The estimate is more than 29 states spend in a year.<\/p>\n
Every criminal group saw that Gavin Newsom was opening the floodgates of state spending. They could take whatever they wanted and he’s losing now an estimated, up to $50 billion a year to fraud,” Rufo told Fox Business.<\/p>\n