A hospice physician in California is facing up to a decade in prison after pleading guilty for their involvement in a kickback fraud scheme that bilked Medicare of nearly $30 million.

Two years following his arrest, Dr. Victor Contreras, 68, recently pled guilty to one count of health care fraud. Contreras served as a physician for two Pasadena-based providers, Saint Mariam Hospice Inc. and Arcadia Hospice Provider Inc.

Contreras defrauded Medicare of nearly $4 million in false and fraudulent hospice claims from July 2016 to February 2019, according to the plea agreement. U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. has scheduled a sentencing hearing for October 25, with Contreras facing a maximum of 10 years in federal prison.

“Contreras falsely stated on claims forms that patients had terminal illnesses to make them eligible for hospice services covered by Medicare, typically adopting diagnoses provided to him by hospice employees whether or not they were true,” the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California indicated in a statement. “Contreras did so even though he was not the patients’ primary care physician and had not spoken to those primary care physicians about the patients’ conditions.”

Contreras was detained in 2022 by California law enforcement agencies for allegedly receiving kickbacks from multiple parties in exchange for Medicare beneficiary referrals and billing for medically unnecessary hospice services.

Each of the two companies is accused of falsely billing Medicare and Medi-Cal for hospice services that in some cases were never provided.

Arcadia Hospice Provider submitted false Medicare claims to the tune of $23 million. Meanwhile, St. Mariam Hospice submitted nearly $13.5 million in false claims. Contreras was allegedly involved in roughly $5.1 million of these, according to the Justice Department.

Additional charges were issued to medical industry marketer Callie Jean Black, 65, who allegedly recruited patients for the hospice companies in exchange for illegal kickbacks, the Justice Department reported. Black was also arrested in 2022 and has pleaded not guilty to the charges. A sentencing trial is scheduled for October 15.

The charges also included the owner of the two hospice companies, Juanita Antenor, 61, who remains at large. Authorities have not been able to locate Antenor throughout the two-year investigation. The Justice Department believed Antenor could have relocated to the Philippines as of 2022, though nothing has been publicly confirmed.

The FBI, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the California Department of Justice are investigating this case. Prosecutors included U.S. assistant attorneys Kristen Williams of the major fraud section and Aylin Kuzucan of the general crimes section.