The DOJ announced that Juan Carlos Esparza, a 33-year-old resident of Valley Village, California, has pleaded guilty to defrauding Medicare of approximately $16 million by operating a network of fraudulent hospice companies.
Esparza and his co-conspirators ran at least four hospice facilities that submitted false claims to Medicare from July 2019 to January 2023. He owned one of the facilities, House of Angels Hospice, but the others were registered to foreign nationals and secretly managed by Esparza and his team. Medicare has established a strict set of guidelines related to hospice care. Amongst other things, patients must be certified by a doctor as terminally ill with a life expectancy of six months or less. And once a patient enrolls in hospice under Medicare, they gain access to a comprehensive array of support services, including skilled nursing, necessary medical equipment, medications aimed at managing symptoms, assistance from hospice aides, and bereavement counseling for family members.
According to court documents, Esparza and his co-conspirators completely disregarded the foregoing to facilitate their scheme. They used stolen identities, including those of deceased doctors, to create an appearance of legitimacy and bill Medicare for medically unnecessary hospice services that were never even provided. Esparza and his co-conspirators opened bank accounts, signed leases, and submitted Medicare claims using forged documents and falsified credentials tied to unsuspecting foreign nationals. In turn, Medicare paid nearly $16 million in payouts as a result of the scheme, and Esparza and his team engaged in transactional money laundering to conceal the profits. They created shell companies and moved funds across accounts under fake identities to obscure the money’s origin.
Esparza has pleaded guilty to health care fraud and transactional money laundering, and he now awaits consequences that many of his co-conspirators have already faced. One of Esparaza’s co-conspirators, Petros Fichidzhyan, was sentenced to 12 years in prison earlier this year and several others are awaiting their sentences. Esparaza is scheduled to be sentenced on October 6, 2025 and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.
The DOJ will undoubtedly remain committed to aggressively pursuing cases of hospice fraud. The attorneys at Chilivis Grubman represent clients of all types and sizes in connection to health care investigations and litigation. If you need assistance with such a matter, please contact us today.