The federal government charged 73 members of an Armenian-American organized crime enterprise in 2010 with stealing $100 million from Medicare through phantom California clinics.
That was just the beginning.
Now Dr. Oz just announced 800 hospice and home health providers suspended statewide – and revealed the one number that changes the entire Medicare debate.
Foreign Criminal Networks Were Stealing Your Medicare Money for Years
Eight hundred providers.
That number is what happens when organized crime infiltrates a government program and the state government looks the other way for a decade.
Dr. Mehmet Oz – the Trump administration's CMS Administrator – confirmed the suspensions this week, describing the alleged perpetrators as "weaponized, professional hoodlums" who exploited every weakness in the system.
He wasn't being dramatic.
These aren't billing mistakes.
Federal investigators say foreign-linked criminal networks built entire fake hospice businesses in California – fraudulent companies enrolling patients who weren't dying, stealing their Medicare beneficiary numbers, and billing the federal government for end-of-life care that was never delivered.
The $1 billion in alleged theft is what investigators have confirmed so far.
Oz also announced the administration has deferred more than $1 billion in federal payments for the last quarter of audits while investigations continue.
Los Angeles is the epicenter.
Oz called it "not rational" that a single American city accounts for nearly one-third of all hospice providers in the entire country.
His administration is already in the process of shutting down roughly half of them.
What Dr Oz Said That Every Senior Needs to Hear
Here is the number that matters most, and Oz stated it plainly on My View with Lara Trump.
"If we could take out the fraud, waste and abuse, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund."
Double.
Not extend it by a few years. Not buy it a little breathing room.
Double the time your Medicare benefits will be there for you – with no tax increases, no cuts, no new government spending.
Just by stopping criminals from stealing what was already paid in.
https://twitter.com/OwenGregorian/status/2056315430961094741?s=20
The Medicare Trust Fund is already projected to run out within the decade if nothing changes.
That means the hospice fraudsters who've been running ghost companies out of Los Angeles strip malls aren't just stealing money.
They are stealing years of coverage from every senior who paid into Medicare their entire working life.
The Crackdown Is Expanding Past California
Dr. Oz made clear this week that California is not the end of the investigation – it's the loudest example.
He flagged New York, Maine, and Florida as states also under increased scrutiny for Medicare and Medicaid fraud patterns.
But he drew a sharp contrast between California and Florida.
Governor Ron DeSantis, Oz said, is working with the Trump administration to identify and root out fraud in his state.
https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/2056029456205074564?s=20
California's response to the same request was to file a civil rights complaint against Oz for pointing out that foreign criminal networks were running the scam.
The Trump administration has now deferred more than $1 billion in federal payments tied to suspected fraudulent providers while investigations move forward.
JD Vance's anti-fraud task force first started shutting down Los Angeles hospice providers in March – 70 suspensions in the first wave, then 221, and now 800 statewide.
The number keeps climbing.
This Is What They Were Stealing From You
The fraud in California did not hide.
It metastasized.
Los Angeles County went from 109 hospice centers in 2010 to more than 1,800 by 2021 – fraudsters using license-flipping to open shell companies faster than regulators could track them.
One state assemblymember found 197 hospice agencies registered to a single building.
https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2054668841410863229?s=20
California's own state auditor warned about this in 2022.
Newsom read the report and missed his own deadline to adopt emergency regulations by January 1, 2026.
The criminals kept billing.
Oz is now reviewing every single hospice in California before the year ends.
The 800 suspended providers are not the ceiling.
They're the floor.
Sources:
- Taylor Penley, "Dr Oz says 800 hospice providers suspended in California over alleged $1B Medicare fraud scheme," Fox News, May 17, 2026.
- Preston Mizell, "Vance Anti-Fraud Task Force Suspends 221 California Hospice and Healthcare Providers So Far," Fox News, April 2, 2026.
- William La Jeunesse, "Los Angeles hospice fraud reaches billions as Medicare providers scam federal system with fake companies," Fox News, January 30, 2026.
- Madison Colombo, "Comer tells Newsom to 'lawyer up' as House Oversight launches California fraud probe," Fox News, March 25, 2026.