FBI Busts $50 Million Hospice Fraud in California — 15 Doctors and Nurses Charged

This morning we executed operation never say die.

Federal agents from multiple agencies descended on fraudsters throughout.

We’re going to review every single hospice in California to make sure that they’re all appropriate and we hope to do that expeditiously.

We’ll do it this year.

A federal task force spans out across Southern California and the targets are not cartel bosses or arms dealers.

Before dawn on April 2nd, 2026, a coordinated federal ederal strike force rolled through Los Angeles County and into the suburb ringing it Coina Anaheim Glendale Tarzana.

Agents from the FBI, IRS criminal investigation, HHS Office of Inspector General, the FDA, and the Department of Labor moved in tandem, operating under the authority of the Vice President’s Anti-fraud Task Force.

Their targets lived in quiet residential neighborhoods, drove clean cars, held medical licenses.

By sunrise, eight individuals were in federal custody.

15 total indictments had been unsealed across Southern California.

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The operation carried a name that read like dark comedy.

Operation Never Say Die, a federal crackdown on an industry built around death, targeting people who had turned dying into the most profitable business in the county.

Initial DOJ estimates placed the total fraud above $50 million.

Some internal reports pushed the figure closer to 60 million, all of it siphoned directly from Medicare.

Inside the rated properties, agents cataloged what they found.

Agents found no stockpiles of narcotics or weapons caches, discovering instead mortgage documents on second and third homes, luxury vehicle registrations, international flight itineraries to Manila, to Seoul, to Dubai.

every asset traceable back to a single revenue stream.

American taxpayer dollars earmarked for end of life care.

The physical evidence was damning enough on its own.

But when federal auditors turned from the properties to the medical records, from the bank statements to the patient files these facilities had submitted to justify their billing.

They found something that defied every known standard in hospice medicine.

A statistical impossibility buried inside the data.

Investigators turned first to a facility in Glendale registered under the name 626 Hospice, also known as St.

Francis Paliotive Care.

Behind the license sat 66-year-old Dr.

Gladwin Gil and his 70-year-old wife Amalu Gil, a psychologist and nurse.

On paper, their operation looked routine, a modest hospice serving terminally ill patients in their final months.

Federal auditors pulled 5 years of Medicare claims and cross-referenced them against patient outcomes.

Over 97% of patients admitted to 626 hospice survived.

A hospice by definition exists for people expected to die within 6 months.

Across the national average, roughly 17% of hospice patients are discharged alive.

The gills were running a facility where almost nobody died.

30 mi south in Artisia, a second anomaly surfaced.

65-year-old licensed vocational nurse Lolita Baronila Minard operated Topanga Hospice Care, Inc.

out of a nondescript commercial suite.

Her facility posted an 85% live discharge rate, nearly five times the national benchmark.

Auditors flagged the pattern immediately.

Patients admitted under terminal diagnosis were walking out weeks later with no change in condition, no decline, no treatment consistent with end of life care.

In Semi Valley, a third facility completed the picture.

50-year-old CEO Ivan Vern Lurson ran Valley Pacific Hospice, a company that had already drawn federal scrutiny.

Medicare revoked its billing license in 2024 after audits exposed massive false billing patterns.

Claims submitted for services never rendered, for patients never examined, for conditions never diagnosed.

The revocation should have been a warning shot.

The data confirmed what prosecutors had suspected from the start.

These were sham facilities built to look like hospices staffed to pass cursory inspections, but engineered for a single purpose.

They enrolled patients who were not terminally ill.

And in many cases, these individuals had no serious medical conditions at all.

Each name attached to thousands of dollars in automatic federal reimbursements.

Enrolling them was only the entry point.

The real architecture of the crime revealed itself in what happened next.

The speed and precision with which every fraudulent claim converted into cash the moment Medicare approved it.

The pipeline ran like a billing factory.

Fraudulent claims entered the Medicare system under terminal diagnosis.

Federal payment processors approved them within days and wire transfers landed in operator accounts before any human reviewer touched the file.

Between July 2020 and April 2025, Lolita Minard submitted over $9.

17 million in fabricated claims through Topanga Hospice Care.

Medicare paid out more than $ 8.

5 million of it, a conversion rate above 92%.

For every dollar she build, 92 cents came back clean.

In Glendale, Gladwin and Amalu Gil pushed $7.

45 million in fraudulent claims through 626 hospice.

Federal payment records show they collected over $4 million deposited directly into accounts they controlled.

Across Tarzana, 51-year-old nurse Evelyn Tindy Mobuna operated Comfort Choice Hospice Incorporated, a facility that build $3.

8 million between 2022 and 2025.

Medicare returned 3.

4 4 million of it, almost 90% for patients who were never dying.

None of the extracted funds circulated back into patient care.

IRS criminal investigation traced the outflows account by account, transaction by transaction.

Manard’s proceeds funded personal mortgage payments on residential properties across Southern California.

The Gills routed their 4 million into luxury vehicle financing, international airline tickets, and high-end restaurant tabs documented on corporate cards.

Tindy Mobuna followed the same template, converting Medicare reimbursements into personal living expenses indistinguishable from a six-f figureure salary.

Money designated by Congress for Americans in their final days of life paid for leather interiors, first class upgrades, and waterfront dining.

To keep the claims flowing, every operator in the network needed a constant supply of new patient names.

Recruiters received illegal kickbacks, cash payments per referral for steering individuals into the enrollment pipeline regardless of medical eligibility.

Licensed medical professionals signed off on fabricated terminal diagnosis in exchange for a cut, lending their credentials to paperwork they never verified.

Each new name generated thousands in automatic reimbursements, and each kickback ensured another name would follow.

The financial trail was clean enough for prosecutors to map in weeks.

Amounts, dates, and account numbers aligned with surgical precision.

The deeper problems surfaced when investigators stopped following the money and started pulling the licensing records behind each facility.

Searching for who the state of California had actually authorized to operate them.

Every licensed hospice in California must clear a regulatory gate before treating a single patient.

background checks, clean records, verified credentials.

The network treated those requirements like suggestions.

Gladwin and Amalu Gil both carried prior federal convictions for tax evasion, disqualifying marks that should have locked them out of the Medicare system permanently.

Instead of walking away, they registered 626 hospice under their daughter’s name, placed her signature on every state filing, and continued operating the facility themselves.

California’s licensing apparatus approved the application without flagging the connection.

In Glendale, the workaround was even more brazen.

76-year-old Nita Almuetti Patt Palma and 68-year-old Adultho Catbagen built a small empire of fraudulent care facilities between June 2022 and April 2024.

OneUp Hospice Care, Rosewood Hospice, and Advance Hospice.

Three separate entities scattered across the same city, all funneling claims into the same Medicare pipeline.

Together, the pair submitted $4.

8 million in fabricated billing, and collected $4.

2 million in federal reimbursements, an 87% extraction rate, matching the efficiency of every other node in the network.

Court filings from the Central District of California revealed the detail that federal prosecutors circled in red.

Palma did not simply have a criminal record.

She was actively incarcerated in a federal prison facility during the period her hospices were submitting claims and receiving payments.

A sitting federal inmate convicted on prior fraud charges maintained operational control of three licensed medical businesses billing the United States government for end of life care.

After her release, she continued the scheme while free on bond, awaiting sentencing on the earlier case.

State regulators never intervened as no audit flagged the ownership anomaly and no licensing review cross referenced Palma’s Bureau of Prisons intake number against the Medicare provider enrollment database.

The tools existed, the data was accessible, and the overlap between her incarceration dates and her billing dates was visible to anyone who looked.

Nobody looked.

Each facility Palma and Catbagen controlled passed through the same state approval process that cleared the gills.

The same process that approved Manurds to Panga Hospice.

The same process that licensed Tindamuna’s comfort choice.

A pattern emerged far larger than any single operator.

The federal government was writing checks and the state was handing out the keys to cash them without once verifying who was standing on the other side of the door.

The stolen dollars measured the crime.

The betrayal measured something worse.

15 medical professionals licensed by the state, sworn to care for the vulnerable, converted a federal safety net into a personal extraction machine.

They did not exploit a loophole in some obscure tax provision.

They commodified dying Americans, trading illegal kickbacks for patient referrals, fabricating terminal diagnosis, and billing a system built to ease suffering in its final hours.

Every fraudulent claim carried a name.

a Medicare beneficiary number attached to a real person whose end of life care was reduced to a line item on a spreadsheet.

The regulatory collapse extended far beyond individual operators.

At a federal press conference in Los Angeles, CMS administrator doctor memed and first assistant United States Attorney Bill stepped to the podium and directed their sharpest language not at the defendants but at the state of California.

SA stated on the record that the state had failed to adequately oversee its own licensed facilities.

Oz reinforced the charge, citing missed legislative deadlines for hospice reform that Sacramento had allowed to expire without action.

Federal investigators had flagged the vulnerabilities years earlier.

Sacramento received the warnings, acknowledged the gaps, and did nothing.

The public rebuke targeted Governor Gavin Newsome’s administration by name.

According to federal officials, California’s Department of Public Health possessed the authority and the data to cross-reference provider enrollment records against federal criminal databases.

Bureau of Prison’s intake logs were not classified.

Medicare billing timestamps were not hidden.

A single query matching Palma’s incarceration dates against her facility’s active claims would have triggered an immediate revocation.

That query never ran.

No inspector visited and no license was suspended.

Three hospice networks operated across Glendale, Artisia, Tarzana, and Smi Valley for years, enrolling patients who were not dying, collecting millions in federal reimbursements, and laundering the proceeds through personal accounts.

The state approved every application, renewed every license, and certified every facility without once catching the most basic disqualifying flag in the system.

A convicted federal inmate actively running medical businesses from a prison cell.

Sacramento’s inaction did not just allow fraud.

It constructed the dark space where fraud flourished unchecked, where operators knew that no one was watching, no one was auditing, and no one would come knocking until the federal government finally did.

The hammer fell in April 2026.

But the sentencing precedents already set in California’s federal courts suggest these defendants face consequences far heavier than any state regulator ever imposed.

The hammer was satisfying and the sentences were severe.

Operation Never Say Die closed with eight arrests across Los Angeles County and 15 federal indictments spanning Glendale, Artisia, Tarzana, Seami Valley, and Coina.

Every defendant faces charges carrying decades in federal prison, healthc care fraud, conspiracy, anti- kickback statute violations, and money laundering.

bail conditions locked down passports, froze accounts, and severed contact between co-conspirators.

Federal prosecutors did not need to theorize about sentencing outcomes.

A blueprint already existed.

In November 2025, just 5 months before the sweep, a federal judge in the Central District of California sentenced 44year-old Petro Fitchen to 12 years in prison for orchestrating a $16 million hospice fraud through House of Angels Hospice in Enino.

The court ordered him to pay $17.

1 million in restitution, every cent traced back to fabricated Medicare claims for patients who were never terminally ill.

Three of Fijian’s co-conspirators received their own prison terms, confirming that federal judges had abandoned any remaining tolerance for white collar medical theft.

That president now hangs over the 15 defendants in operation never say die.

Gladwin and Amalu Gil, Lolita Minard, Evelyn Tindamabuna, Nita Palma, Adulo Catbagen, and the remaining indicted operators face a judiciary that has already demonstrated its willingness to impose sentences measured in decades, not months.

Restitution orders in the Fijigian case exceeded the original fraud amount.

Applied proportionally to a $50 million conspiracy, the financial exposure alone could be catastrophic.

Yet, the courtroom is only one half of the equation.

Outside the federal courthouse, the structural failures that enabled the entire network remain largely intact.

California’s Department of Public Health has not announced new cross referencing protocols between provider enrollment databases and federal criminal records.

No emergency legislation has closed the licensing gaps that allowed a federal inmate to operate three hospice facilities simultaneously.

Billions of Medicare dollars continue to flow through the state every single month, processed by the same systems, reviewed by the same understaffed agencies, approved by the same automated pipelines that never flagged a single anomaly across 5 years of fraudulent billing.

15 people were indicted.

Over $50 million were stolen.

The question federal investigators are still asking is how many facilities they have not found yet.

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