The U.S. Department of Justice announced that two West Covina women were arrested Tuesday for an alleged scheme to defraud Medicare of $4.8 million with false hospice care claims.

One of the women who was arrested is the owner and operator of two West Covina hospices, Golden Meadows Hospice Inc., and D'Alexandria Hospice Inc., which billed Medicare for hospice services for patients who were allegedly not terminally ill.  

Between Sept. 2018 and Oct. 2022, owner and operator Normita Sierra, 71, and her alleged accomplice, Rowena Elegado, 55, collected more than $3.8 million from Medicare on false claims, the DOJ said.

Sierra, of West Covina, is charged with nine counts of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiracy, and four counts of illegal remuneration for healthcare referrals. Elegado, also of West Covina, is charged with one count of conspiracy, and four counts of illegal remuneration for health care referrals.

Sierra and Elegado allegedly worked together to pay marketers to recruit patients to the hospices, knowing that most of those patients had not been referred by their primary care physicians for such services.

According to the DOJ, once enrolled, the fraudulent patients rarely died in hospice care and were often discharged after six months, with payouts reaching as much as $1,300 per patient each month they stayed in hospice service.

Others involved in the alleged scheme include Carl Bernardo, 53, of Chino, who pleaded guilty in September 2024 to one count of receiving kickbacks in connection with a federal health care program, and Relyndo Salcedo, 60, of Fontana, a nurse practitioner who pleaded guilty on May 22 to one count of health care fraud.

According to the DOJ, Salcedo was pressured to admit ineligible patients into the hospice and then exaggerated and falsified the patients' conditions to make them seem terminally ill.

If convicted of the charges, Sierra would face a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each count of healthcare fraud. Sierra and Elegado would face up to five years in federal prison for the conspiracy count and up to 10 years in federal prison for each illegal kickback count.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General and the FBI investigated the matter.