The California fraud is so bad that even the mainstream media is investigating it

By Easton Martin | March 19, 2026

Nick Shirley has spent weeks investigating the staggering fraud going on in California, fraud that is of such a large and obvious scale, that even mainstream outlets are getting in on the action. 

A CBS News investigation into California’s hospice industry focuses on a single three-story building in Los Angeles, the Merabi Professional Medical Plaza, which serves as the registered address for 89 different hospice companies. This “clustering” is identified by state auditors as a primary red flag for systemic fraud. Since 2010, Los Angeles County has experienced a 1,500% increase in hospice providers, a growth rate six times the national average when compared to the local elderly population. 

Federal regulators found nearly 400 violations within this specific building alone, including cases where hospices billed for “phantom” visits, prescribed medications for conditions like malaria to patients who did not have them, and even documented the grief of families for patients who were actually still alive.

When dozens of supposedly competing medical firms are crammed into a single office plaza, the scheme moves past the point of subtle deception and into the realm of the absurd. It is a striking indictment of how undeniable and blatant this crisis has become that even CBS News, a core member of the mainstream media establishment, is conducting deep-dive investigations into it.

Usually, such outlets are slow to challenge the integrity of healthcare systems or administrative oversight, but the visual of 89 hospices sharing one directory makes the corruption impossible to overlook. The fact that even a “mainstream” outlet is bringing this to light suggests that the fraud was so obvious, it effectively forced its way beyond the political right.