FBI Arrested a Couple Running a Hospice Where 97 Percent of Dying Patients Survived

A California hospice just recorded a miracle no one in medicine has ever pulled off.

Ninety-seven percent of their terminally ill patients walked out alive.

The FBI has a different explanation for how that happened.

The Most Remarkable Hospice in American History

Gladwin and Amelou Gill – a doctor and a psychologist – co-owned 626 Hospice, operating under the name St. Francis Palliative Care in San Dimas, California.

Over five years, their patients survived at a rate of 97 percent.

And on the surface, you’d think that’d be great news – the national average for patients discharged alive from hospice is 17 percent.

But it’s also a dead giveaway that something different is really happening.

FBI SWAT teams showed up at dawn Thursday to make the arrest. Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was on scene as agents took the couple into custody.

Prosecutors say the Gills submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent Medicare claims for patients who were not terminally ill – and set up the hospice in their daughter's name to hide their own criminal histories.

The miracle had a simpler explanation: the patients were never dying.

One Couple. One County. One Thousand Fake Hospices.

The Gills were not an anomaly. They were Thursday's opening act.

Operation Never Say Die – JD Vance's anti-fraud task force in coordination with the FBI and U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli – announced 15 defendants and more than $50 million in total fraud before the morning was over.

Lolita Minerd's Artesia hospice posted an 85 percent live-discharge rate while billing Medicare $9.1 million. Nita Palma ran three fraudulent hospices simultaneously – from a federal prison cell in Seattle, where she was already serving time for a previous hospice fraud conviction. Her husband was arrested Thursday as her outside operator.

These are not isolated bad actors. Dr. Oz stood at the press conference and said it plainly: half of the 1,800 hospices in Los Angeles County should not be in business.

One office plaza houses 89 registered hospice companies. Forty-two hospice licenses exist within four blocks in Van Nuys. The House Oversight Committee calculated that Los Angeles County alone accounts for $3.5 billion in hospice fraud – and generates 18 percent of all hospice billing in the entire United States, from a county that holds 2.5 percent of the senior population.

Essayli named the man responsible for allowing all of it: "California is the kingdom of fraud and Gavin Newsom reigns over this kingdom."

Newsom Let This Run for Years. Vance Shut It Down in Ten Weeks.

The 2022 California State Auditor flagged an 1,500 percent increase in LA County hospice providers since 2010. The red flags were explicit: same staff shared across multiple companies, impossible live-discharge rates, billing double the national average.

California missed its own January 2026 deadline to adopt emergency hospice regulations.

Oz delivered the line that should end Newsom's presidential ambitions on the spot: in ten weeks, the task force was already approaching what Newsom's administration managed in four years.

Your Medicare taxes funded every fraudulent claim in this operation. HHS officials estimate California's Medicaid fraud rate at 25 percent – $50 billion per year walking out the door while Newsom posed for his national press interviews.

One defendant paid healthy seniors $300 a month to sign up as fake dying patients and handed them nutritional shakes and wheelchairs they did not need – all billed to Medicare as end-of-life care.

Newsom posted on social media Thursday that the federal government was "finally stepping up to do their part."

He did not explain the 89 hospices sharing one building. He did not explain the 1,500 percent increase in LA County hospice providers that happened on his watch. He did not explain why California missed its own January deadline to adopt emergency regulations.

Gavin Newsom reigns over the kingdom of fraud. Bill Essayli just served him notice that the kingdom is coming down.

Government Has Never Been The Accountability Business

Sadly, arrests are one thing and meaningful convictions are another.  

Worse, even if there’s a conviction that doesn’t mean there will be much prison time.

And it sure doesn’t mean there won’t be a pardon.

https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1867346116632883466“>https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1867346116632883466

While Trump is cracking down, someone in his inner circle apparently convinced him it isn’t a bipartisan problem and to pardon a horrible abuser.

https://x.com/Cernovich/status/2039782008428396733“>https://x.com/Cernovich/status/2039782008428396733

It should be obvious.

https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/2038973568864616807“>https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/2038973568864616807

The problem isn’t that government is paying for things it shouldn’t, the problem is that the government is paying at all.

The bigger the government the less responsible.

Sources:

• Adam Yamaguchi, Rachel Gold, Laura Geller, "Hospice where staggering 97% of terminal patients survive is accused of defrauding Medicare for $7.45 million," CBS News, April 2, 2026.
• "Vance anti-fraud task force suspends 221 California hospice and healthcare providers so far," Fox News, April 2, 2026.
• "DOJ targets California's 'kingdom of fraud' in massive $60M hospice takedown," FOX 11 Los Angeles, April 2, 2026.
• "Oversight Committee Launches Investigation Into Rampant Taxpayer Fraud in California Hospice Programs," House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, March 2026.
• "Chairmen Ask HHS OIG About Ongoing HHA and Hospice Fraud in Los Angeles County," House Committee on Energy and Commerce, January 13, 2026.
• Bill Essayli, press conference statement, U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California, April 2, 2026.