A federal jury in San Francisco has convicted Simon Katz, the Boca Raton, Florida-based CEO of a Hayward, California home health agency, of conspiring to defraud Medicare — the fourth and final conviction in a case the government first brought more than two and a half years ago. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced the July 23, 2026 verdict, which followed a six-day trial before U.S. District Judge James Donato.

Katz, 43, ran HealthNow Home Healthcare and Hospice alongside his wife, Veronica Katz, who served as the agency’s CEO of record. According to trial evidence, HealthNow provided in-home medical care to Bay Area patients and billed both Medicare and private insurers for that care. Beginning October 1, 2018, prosecutors say, the couple began submitting fraudulent documents to California Department of Public Health inspectors to keep HealthNow’s Medicare billing privileges intact, while running a scheme with several distinct components: having unqualified staff provide patient care outside their authorized scope of practice, billing Medicare for services never actually rendered, and directing former employees to lie to federal investigators. By the time the scheme ended in November 2020, HealthNow had collected more than $3 million in Medicare payments tied to the fraudulent claims, and Simon Katz personally received roughly $300,000 of that money, according to the government.

According to an earlier December 2024 sentencing announcement, a federal grand jury indicted Veronica Katz and two co-defendants on October 17, 2023. Under her subsequent plea agreement, she admitted the scheme involved using licensed medical practitioners’ names and credentials on electronic medical records and Medicare billing submissions without those practitioners’ knowledge or consent; directing staff who were not Registered Nurses to prepare mandatory “Start of Care” assessment forms that Medicare rules reserve for RNs; digitally altering patient records afterward to make it appear an RN had completed those assessments; and billing Medicare for physical therapy visits that were never provided at all. Prosecutors say the scheme unraveled in part because of an FBI interview in October 2019, when an employee was questioned about HealthNow’s billing and assessment practices; both Katzes learned of that interview and, according to trial evidence, Simon Katz personally instructed the employee to lie to the FBI and falsely claim she had been trained and supervised by an RN.

Veronica Katz pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud on April 18, 2024, and was sentenced that December to two years in federal prison, three years of supervised release, $543,634.34 in restitution to Medicare, and a $50,000 fine; she began serving her sentence on January 6, 2025. Two former HealthNow employees, Vennesa Herrera and Pharadja Andrews, pleaded guilty in August 2021 to conspiracy to commit health care fraud (Herrera also pleaded guilty to a substantive health care fraud count); both are scheduled for status hearings on August 3, 2026. Simon Katz, convicted after contesting the charges through trial, is currently in federal custody with no sentencing date yet set; he faces a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine under 18 U.S.C. section 3553’s sentencing framework. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Chris Highsmith and Kevin Yeh prosecuted the trial, with assistance from Kevin Costello and Lynette Dixon; the investigation was conducted by the FBI, HHS-OIG, and the California Department of Public Health.

The new Simon Katz jury verdict lands amid a marked escalation in federal health care fraud enforcement on the West Coast and nationally. The Department of Justice created a new National Fraud Enforcement Division (NFED) on April 7, 2026, consolidating the department’s health care fraud prosecutors into a single coordinating hub tied to the administration’s broader Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. Three weeks later, on April 30, 2026, NFED and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Northern District of California, Nevada, and Arizona launched a new West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force, staffed by at least ten NFED prosecutors and modeled on the long-running national Medicare Fraud Strike Force program, which has collectively prosecuted more than 6,200 defendants since its creation. That regional push has run alongside a larger national effort: DOJ’s 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, announced June 23, 2026, charged 455 defendants — including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals — across 56 federal districts and 45 states and territories in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims, with 50 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units participating, the most in the takedown’s history.

U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian tied the Katz conviction directly to that broader push, framing the case as part of what he called the administration’s “War on Fraud” and pledging continued prosecution of anyone who steals from federal health programs. FBI Special Agent in Charge Scott Schelble and HHS-OIG Special Agent in Charge Robb R. Breeden likewise pointed to the case as an example of sustained interagency work, with Breeden noting the investigation reflected “years of determined investigative work and close coordination among federal and state partners.” For home health agencies and their insurers, the case is a reminder that Medicare’s documentation requirements around who may perform and sign off on patient assessments — particularly Start of Care evaluations reserved for Registered Nurses — remain a frequent and closely scrutinized target of federal fraud enforcement, and that obstruction of an active investigation, not just the underlying billing fraud, can add substantially to a defendant’s eventual exposure.