Three women associated with Houston-based United Hospice & Palliative Care (UPHC) have been charged with Medicaid and Medicare fraud after allegedly bilking more than $87 million in federal health care funds.

The trio includes UPHC owner Dera Ogudo, an UPHC employee Victoria Martinez and a psychiatric hospital employee, Evelyn Shaw, ABC-13 Houston reported. The prosecutor’s indictment also includes an unnamed physician who allegedly received kickbacks for referrals to UPHC.

“Ogudo and her co-conspirators preyed on the vulnerable residents of those group homes by enrolling them in hospice services with UPHC when they were not terminally ill,” the indictment indicated.

Texas has emerged as a hotbed of hospice fraud, along with California, Nevada and Arizona as rashes of new providers enter the space. In many cases, patients were enrolled in hospice without their knowledge or consent. Many also receive poor quality care or none at all, among many other violations and unscrupulous practices.

A number of these hospice scammers also own and operate group homes and target those patients for fraud, as is allegedly the case with UPHC, according to prosecutors.

“Ogudo, her family members, and her co-conspirators owned and operated several group homes in the Houston area where elderly, disabled, and mentally ill Medicare beneficiaries lived,” court documents indicated.