(Image Credit: IMAGN) The Kentucky Sentate gavel rests on the wooden sound block in the Kentucky Senate chambers before the first day of Concurrence began at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Ky. March 13, 2025.
Glendale, California – A Glendale woman was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in federal prison for orchestrating a wide-ranging Medicare fraud scheme involving kickbacks and falsified hospice care, resulting in over $10 million in fraudulent claims to the federal government.
Nita Almuete Paddit Palma, 75, was convicted last December of 28 felony counts, including health care fraud and paying illegal kickbacks. On top of her 108-month sentence, she was ordered to pay more than $8.2 million in restitution. According to prosecutors, Palma continued to defraud Medicare even after being previously banned from participating in the program due to prior convictions.
Court records show that beginning in 2015, Palma used family members to conceal her ownership of two hospices—Magnolia Gardens and C@A Hospice. Despite her exclusion from Medicare, Palma exercised control over both operations and used them as vehicles for fraudulent billing. Over the course of several years, she paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal referral fees to so-called “marketers,” including Percy Dean Abrams, 75, of Lakewood. Abrams was sentenced Tuesday to three years of probation, with two years to be served under home confinement.
The fraud centered on hospice care, a specialized form of treatment reserved for patients with terminal illnesses and a life expectancy of six months or less. Patients enrolled in hospice forgo curative treatments, and Medicare coverage adjusts accordingly. But according to prosecutors, many of the patients billed by Palma’s hospices were not dying—and in some cases, had no idea they had been signed up for hospice at all.
Witnesses testified that Abrams, working at Palma’s direction, recruited individuals who were not terminally ill and assured them they could still receive hospice services. Once he collected personal identifying information, the patients’ names were sent to Palma, who would enroll them in Medicare-funded hospice care, receiving approximately $6,000 per patient each month. Abrams and other recruiters were paid kickbacks of up to $1,000 per patient.
The fraud extended to documentation as well. When Medicare requested records to verify the legitimacy of hospice claims, Palma and her husband ordered employees to fabricate patient charts. Prosecutors say that while awaiting trial, Palma also quietly assumed control of three additional hospices, submitting nearly $5 million more in claims to Medicare.
