Florida Couple Convicted in $3M Medicare Home Health Fraud

The Florida couple Medicare fraud home healthcare case now has a jury verdict against Simon Katz, the Boca Raton resident who served as CEO of HealthNow Home Healthcare in Hayward, California. On July 23, 2026, after a six-day trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, Katz was convicted for his role in a scheme that prosecutors said used the Bay Area agency to submit more than $3 million in fraudulent Medicare claims from 2018 through 2020. His wife and co-owner, Veronica Katz, had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced, making Simon Katz’s verdict the fourth and final conviction in the investigation. The DOJ Northern District of California releases identified in the source materials were not readable during source review, so the Katz record facts below are attributed to Fox35 Orlando’s report of the DOJ announcement rather than to a directly reviewed primary release. [1]

What prosecutors said made the home health claims fraudulent

The useful part of the Katz record is not the round-number headline. It is the set of acts prosecutors were able to organize into a fraud case: unqualified professionals providing patient care, claims for services that were not rendered, falsified documents prepared for California Department of Health inspectors, forged physician signatures on medical records, and an instruction to a former employee to lie to federal officials. [1]

Those details matter because they move the file out of the zone that defendants often try to describe as documentation disorder. A missed form, a late note, or a weak internal audit trail can be compliance failures without necessarily carrying the same evidentiary meaning. A forged physician signature is different. A false document prepared for a state inspector is different. A direction to an employee to lie to federal officials is different again, because it gives prosecutors a concealment story alongside the billing story.

In the Katz matter, the care setting also matters. Home health billing depends on records that connect patient need, physician involvement, qualified services, visits actually performed, and agency supervision. If the record says a physician approved care when the signature was forged, the claim problem is not just a defective attachment. It is a false representation about the clinical authorization underlying payment. If the agency bills for a visit that did not occur, the falsehood is not buried in a coding nuance. It goes to whether Medicare owed the money at all.

The inspection-document allegation adds a second audience for the same conduct. Medicare paid the claims, but state inspectors reviewed the agency’s operational records. Falsifying documents for California Department of Health inspectors, as reported in the Katz record, suggests that the agency’s paper trail was being shaped not merely for reimbursement but also for regulatory survival. [1]

The co-defendant map: four convictions, one investigation

Simon Katz’s trial verdict came at the end of the case, not the beginning. Veronica Katz, described in the reported DOJ account as his wife and a former CEO of HealthNow, pleaded guilty on April 18, 2024. She was sentenced on December 9, 2024, to two years in prison, $543,634.34 in restitution, and a $50,000 fine. [1]

Two former employees, Vennesa Herrera and Pharadja Andrews, had pleaded guilty earlier, on August 30, 2021. [1] That sequence is worth keeping in view. By the time Simon Katz went to trial in 2026, the government was not presenting the case as a first-pass theory against an agency owner. It had already secured guilty pleas from the other three defendants in the investigation.

The husband-wife ownership structure should not be overstated beyond the available record. The source materials do not show that spousal ownership, by itself, was unlawful. The exposure came from alleged operational conduct: who controlled the agency, who profited, what records were falsified, what claims were submitted, and what employees were told to do when investigators appeared. The marital relationship explains the ownership structure and case label; it does not replace the proof.

Why the July 2026 timing matters

The Katz conviction landed less than one month after DOJ announced the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown. On June 23, 2026, DOJ reported charges against 455 defendants across 56 federal districts involving more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims. [2] Florida activity was especially prominent: reporting on the takedown identified 12 defendants in the Southern District of Florida alone tied to more than $4 billion in alleged fraudulent claims involving durable medical equipment, skin substitutes, and wound care. [3]

Those takedown numbers show enforcement tempo, but they do not explain the Katz case. The Katz record is smaller than the national headline and more useful for home health operators precisely because it shows how a case can be built from ordinary agency functions: staffing, visit records, physician signatures, billing submissions, inspection files, and employee communications.

For scale, the home health lane has produced much larger Florida-linked cases. In October 2023, a jury convicted Karel Felipe and Tamara Quicutis in a $93 million Medicare home health fraud case involving shell companies, nominee owners from Cuba, stolen patient identities, and ATM cash-outs in Miami. [4] DOJ later described the matter as a $93 million health care fraud and money-laundering scheme. [5]

That comparison should be kept narrow. The available materials for Felipe and Quicutis do not establish that they were married, and the mechanics reported there differ from the Katz allegations. The point is not that the cases are factual twins. It is that home health remains a recurring enforcement setting, and Florida-linked defendants continue to appear in both large and smaller-dollar prosecutions.

Risk signals in the Katz record

The first risk signal is individual exposure inside a family-run or spouse-owned agency. The Katz record does not treat the company as the only actor. It identifies individual owners, executives, employees, plea dates, restitution, fines, and sentencing exposure. For lawyers reviewing a comparable file, that means the ownership chart is not background decoration. It is part of the government’s map of control and benefit.

The second signal is the treatment of clinical paperwork. Forged physician signatures and false medical records are not safely characterized as back-office looseness when they support Medicare payment. In a home health file, physician involvement and documentation of services are payment facts. When those records are fabricated, the billing file can become the evidence file.

The third signal is obstruction exposure. The reported Katz facts include an instruction to a former employee to lie to federal officials to conceal the fraud. [1] That kind of allegation gives prosecutors more than a reimbursement theory. It supplies evidence that the defendant understood the conduct was wrongful and tried to keep investigators from seeing it.

Simon Katz still faces sentencing. The current record leaves that date unset as of July 27, 2026, and the page should be updated when the court schedules sentencing or imposes sentence. [1]

References

1. Florida couple guilty in $3M Medicare fraud scheme tied to California home healthcare company — Fox35 Orlando
2. National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in 455 Defendants Charged in Connection with over $6.5 Billion in Alleged Fraud — U.S. Department of Justice, June 23, 2026
3. DOJ Announces Record Number of Defendants Charged in 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown — National Law Review
4. Jury Convicts Duo In $93 Million Medicare Home Health Fraud Scam — Home Health Care News, October 2023
5. Two Florida Residents Sentenced for $93M Health Care Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme — U.S. Department of Justice