Californian Medicare Hospice Hustle Meets the Long Arm of the Law
Fake end-of-life care has become a multimillion-dollar racket — and the Trump administration is cracking down.
by Steve Postal
April 8, 2026, 2:07 AM
President Trump’s Department of Justice recently arrested five California residents alleged to have participated in massive hospice fraud. This follows several high-level hospice fraud convictions and settlements secured by the administration, yielding significant jail time for the fraudsters and financial recoupment for taxpayers.
Lolita Beronilla Minerd, a licensed vocational nurse, was one of the five just arrested. According to court documents, Minerd owned and operated a hospice company from which she allegedly billed over $9.1 million in false claims to Medicare (collecting more than $8.5 million) from July 2020 to April 2025. Specifically, Minerd allegedly billed Medicare for hospice services for beneficiaries who were not terminally ill, and allegedly paid kickbacks to beneficiaries and marketers for the referral of purported hospice patients to her company. Her hospice had a non-death discharge rate of approximately 85 percent, whereas the national average in 2021 was 17.2 percent from 2021. (RELATED: Uncovered: The Power of the Citizen Journalist)
Another person arrested was Gladwin Gill, a purported psychologist, and his wife, Amelou Gill, a registered nurse. According to court documents, the Gills owned and operated a hospice company. The Gills allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by paying illegal kickbacks for the referral of patients who were not dying. The Gills allegedly submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services that either were not medically necessary or were not provided, for which Medicare paid them more than $4 million. The Gills then allegedly spent these funds on their personal mortgage payments, car payments, international flights, dining at restaurants, and bills. (RELATED: Washington’s Fraud Factory)
The third arrest was Nita Almuete Paddit Palma and her husband, Adolfo Cezar Catbagan, who are being charged with operating at least three fraudulent hospice care facilities. As alleged in the charges, from June 2022 to April 2024, Palma and Catbagan opened three hospice care facilities despite Palma being legally barred from doing so, given previous convictions of healthcare fraud. Catbagan was named the nominal owner and CEO of the three hospices when Palma, in fact, owned and exercised operating control over them — despite her exclusion — so that Medicare would not deny the companies’ claims. The defendants submitted false claims to Medicare for beneficiaries who were not terminally ill, and the physicians supposedly providing hospice services did not treat the patients. Palma and Catbagan submitted at least $4.8 million in alleged false claims through these companies, with Medicare paying them at least $4.2 million.
https://spectator.org/californian-medicare-hospice-hustle-meets-the-long-arm-of-the-law/
