Five arrests made in $267M California hospice fraud case
Five people were arrested by California DOJ in a hospice fraud scheme that defrauded nearly $250 million, AG Rob Bonta announced on April 9.
Five people were arrested by the California Department of Justice in connection with a major health care and hospice fraud scheme in Southern California that defrauded taxpayers of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on April 9. In total, the state filed charges against 21 people.
The investigation, Operation Skip Trace, which the state’s DOJ initiated, uncovered and dismantled a Medi-Cal scheme in which 14 hospice companies purchased personal information of non-California residents on the dark web and enrolled the stolen identities in the state-administered Medicaid program.
How was the California hospice fraud case…
IT & DATA SECURITY (MITIGATING THE “INSIDER THREAT”)
As seen in the TD Bank case, an employee with too much “access” can sell your customer data to syndicates.
- Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP): Employees should only have access to the specific folders and databases required for their current task.
- Access Revocation: Have a “Termination Checklist” that ensures all digital access (Email, VPN, Banking) is revoked within 60 minutes of an employee resigning or being dismissed.
- System Logs & Audit Trails: Enable “Read/Write Logging” on your server. If a customer’s data is leaked, you need to know exactly which login accessed that record and at what time.
- Encryption at Rest: Ensure that sensitive files (like your customer ID numbers or payroll spreadsheets) are encrypted so that if a staff member copies them to a USB, they cannot be read.