An 80-year-old administrator of a Southern California hospice was sentenced to 30 months in prison over his role in a multimillion-dollar hospice fraud scheme.
Antonio Olivera of Norwalk, a city just outside of Los Angeles, was ordered to pay about $2.2 million in restitution fees, pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in November 2020. Three co-conspirators who pleaded guilty are awaiting sentencing.
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As part of his guilty plea, Olivera admitted that from 2011 to 2018, he and others paid illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters for the referral of hospice beneficiaries to Mhiramarc Management LLC, where he was acting administrator.
When clinical staff at Mhiramarc determined beneficiary referrals didn’t qualify to receive hospice services, Olivera allegedly overruled those determinations and caused beneficiaries to be put on hospice service.
Olivera and three others involved prompted Mhiramarc to submit around $28 million in claims to Medicare, which resulted in the company being paid over $17 million, according to the Justice Department. Olivera was allegedly responsible for almost $5 million of the claims, resulting in Medicare paying Mhiramarc almost $3 million for medically unnecessary hospice services for beneficiaries, many which were recruited through illegal kickbacks.
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The case was investigated by the FBI‘s Los Angeles Field Office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s regional office. Trial attorneys Justin Givens and Claire Yan of the Justice Department‘s Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are prosecuting the case.
