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YouTuber and investigative journalist Nick Shirley’s quest to uncover fraud continues to yield results that — while alarming — are also admittedly hilarious in watching. After gaining national attention for his investigation of Minnesota’s Somali communities, Shirley has made his way to Los Angeles, California. In an update posted to social media platform X on Sunday, Shirley paid a “friendly” visit to a “hospice consulting” business, inquiring with employees as to how he could start one. They were, predictably, unwilling to oblige. “LA hospice fraudsters shut down their fraudulent business and flee the building. This ‘business’ was operating as a...

The FBI arrested a married couple Thursday accused of fraudulently billing Medicare for $7.45 million while running a hospice with a survival rate reported to be more than 97% after five years. They were the first in a series of arrests planned Thursday, federal officials told CBS News. A high survival rate at a hospice provider is one of a series of red flags identified by state auditors for fraud because most people enter hospice care in the final stages of a terminal illness. In past cases of fraud, operators were found to be using false or stolen identities to...

🚨UPDATE: LA hospice fraudsters shut down their fraudulent business and flee the building. This “business” was operating as a home healthcare and hospice consultant, teaching others how to start a fraudulent hospice business. Why run if you have nothing to hide? FRAUD.

70 hospice and home health providers in Los Angeles were cut off from federal funding in one week after being flagged for fraud by Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force, with officials indicating that additional providers are likely to be flagged as the review widens. Early findings point to a broader network of activity than the initial suspensions suggest. “As the task force to root out waste, fraud and abuse ramps up, we expect this number to grow exponentially.” As RedState previously reported, the GOP-led House Oversight Committee has now opened an investigation into what they describe as “rampant”...

Republican House Oversight Committee members announced that the committee had launched an investigation into claims of hospice fraud in California. “Despite clear red flags, it appears California leaders have enabled hospice providers to DEFRAUD hardworking American taxpayers,” Chairman James Comer wrote on X. “The House Oversight Committee is moving to protect taxpayer funds from waste, fraud, and abuse.” The outrage started in January when Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said California owed over $1 billion in Medicaid funds improperly used for health care for illegal aliens.

The Merabi Professional Medical Plaza, a three-story, 32,000 square foot stucco and glass office building in Los Angeles, is home to a salon, a law office, a modeling agency, a realty corporation and, also, 89 licensed hospice companies. Patient advocate Sheila Clark, who has worked to expose allegations of widespread Medicare fraud in the hospice industry, calls this building "ground zero" for the issue. "This particular building I noticed, I'm like, 'dang, how can there be that many licensed and certified hospices in this tiny little building?,'" Clark said. The building is among the most extreme cases of what's known...

This is a different type of hospice fraud. Seniors not aware they are in hospice (they aren't dying), neglected and defrauded when the home owner distributes their identity information to others who bill medicaid.DrOzCMS @DrOzCMSHospice fraud isn’t just about stealing your tax dollars – in some cases it’s about stealing your life. Federal and state authorities raided this illegal hospice ring in southern California earlier this month, but there are plenty more like it. We won’t rest until seniors and taxpayers are safe. March 18, 2026

This has been pretty entertaining today. I've been catching a bunch of Nick's videos in between stories, and holy smokes - what he's finding doing his trademark wander around and knock on doors is, well, classic Shirley. That sweet face and so innocent, pre-pubescent teenage boy's voice, 'If I open a hospice, can I get a brand new Maybach, too?'The kid is a treasure. This is where it all starts. He's at what looks like an old, rundown two-story motor inn. The kind you might remember from trips as a kid, where you drove through some sort of an arch...

At age 69, Lynn Ianni is a pickleball whiz, zipping from dinks to drives energetically. When she suffered an injury on the court two years ago, she sought physical therapy, and was surprised to learn her Medicare insurance wouldn’t cover it. She was, according to Medicare records, dying and in hospice. - snip - “They said, ‘you're in hospice.’ And I said, ‘what? What are you talking about?” Ianni said. “‘Are you kidding me? Do I look like I’m in hospice?’” Ianni’s Medicare number had been stolen, and used by a company to fraudulently enroll her in hospice – specialized,...

The fraud being exposed in California is INSANE - 18% of THE WHOLE COUNTRY’S home health care billing is coming out of Los Angeles County - One doctor billed the government $120 million in a single year claiming to oversee 1,900 patients - With almost 2,000 hospice agencies, Los Angeles County has more than 36 states combined and 30X MORE than the whole state of Florida and New York “How is that possible? And take a look at this map, a cluster of 287 hospice providers, in a two-mile radius, some in strip malls, unmarked buildings, even a wrecking yard...

The Brief Dr. Oz claims to have identified 42 hospices in a four-block radius in Van Nuys, alleging they are part of a $3.5 billion fraud scheme. Gov. Newsom’s office is reviewing reports of "racial profiling" after Oz filmed video outside Armenian-owned businesses, including a bakery and art studio. Despite the high-profile claims, CMS has not yet released specific new case filings or names of the 42 entities allegedly involved in the Van Nuys cluster. SNIP

Billions of dollars in alleged fraudulent healthcare spending is being investigated in California, specifically probing foreign nationals operating illegal hospice facilities — officials announced Friday in a bombshell press conference. “We have witnessed a sevenfold increase in hospice in LA County, sevenfold. That doesn’t happen naturally,” Dr Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told The Post during at the press conference. “There is not seven times more deaths in LA County than there were five years ago. These are fraudsters, and these do tend to be foreign influences, either Russian and Armenian gangs, mafia,...

Hospice care aims to bring comfort, peace, and dignity to patients at the end of life. Yet for the growing number of Americans with dementia who enter hospice, their course is often long and unpredictable—making it especially important to ensure treatments align with each person's goals and stage of illness. A new study published finds that medications commonly prescribed to ease symptoms such as agitation, anxiety, and delirium—benzodiazepines and antipsychotics—may carry major unintended risks for people with dementia receiving hospice care. Among more than 139,000 nursing home residents with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias enrolled in hospice between 2014 and...

After years at the bedside of dying patients, a hospice doctor noticed a striking pattern – when the end comes, people don’t cling to fear. In its place come final words that are quiet, powerful, and often shockingly unexpected. While death is one of the most feared and least discussed parts of life, it is a moment of deep psychological transformation for many. Dr. Christopher Kerr, a palliative care physician with over two decades of experience at Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo, has studied more than 1,500 end-of-life events. His findings challenge our traditional understanding of dying – not as...

A Wisconsin nurse who amputated a patient’s frostbitten foot without authorization and planned to use it as a ghoulish display in her family’s taxidermy shop was given a sweetheart plea deal in which she’ll serve no time in prison and pay just $443 in court costs. Mary K. Brown, 40, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of negligently abusing a 62-year-old patient at Spring Valley Senior Living and Healthcare Campus in 2022 for the rogue surgical procedure. The patient died days later, though no definitive link was made between his death and the amputation, according to a criminal complaint....

There are few treatment decisions more difficult for families and loved ones to make than those surrounding the use of artificial nutrition and hydration in the seriously or terminally ill person:“Should nutrition be given intravenously if my wife’s gut isn’t working right?”“Should intravenous fluids be given to my father when he stops drinking and becomes dehydrated?”“Should a feeding tube be placed if my mother can’t swallow without choking?”Family members agonize over these questions, especially if they are not given clear explanations about the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of various available treatments, and what kind of burdens, side effects and...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five minutes after news broke that President Biden has been diagnosed with COVID, Democrat party leaders were forced to make the difficult decision to place Biden on hospice care. "We just want Joe to be comfortable with the short time he has left," explained Senator Chuck Schumer. "We spent a long, hard thirty seconds deliberating over what to do, and we all agreed this is for the best." President Biden reportedly resisted the idea of being placed on hospice, but Democrat leaders assured the doctors that he was demented and didn't know what he was saying....

A dying Marine veteran was finally handed his high school diploma while receiving hospice care after dropping out to fight in World War Two over eight decades ago. Richard Remp, a 98-year-old marine veteran in hospice care, left school at 17 years of age to serve in World War II, before later continuing his service in Korea and Vietnam. But on Friday he was finally handed the high school diploma he had longed for all these years but never received. Remp told local San Antonio NBC affiliate NEWS4SA: 'On behalf of myself and the Marine Corps, I thank you very...

Former President Jimmy Carter hasn’t seen any “significant change” in his health, despite his grandson warning again this week that the 99-year-old’s life was “coming to the end,” according to the director of the former commander in chief’s namesake nonprofit organization. Carter remains “at home, enjoying peanut butter ice cream and getting the food he wants any time he wants it,” Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Politically Georgia podcast Wednesday. “It’s 15 months of hospice at this point, and he is fully retired,” Alexander explained. “There really hasn’t been a significant change. I mean, he will...

Last month, former President Jimmy Carter marked one year in hospice. After entering end-of-life care in February 2023, he celebrated his 99th birthday and grieved the death of his wife of 77 years and former first lady, Rosalynn Carter. Even then, Carter was able — with help — to attend her funeral. Even at the end of life, the nation’s longest-living president — someone who “practically no one ever thought” would be elected president, writes the New York Times’ Peter Baker — is defying the odds. According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 90% of patients who enter...