The California Attorney General announced that Maki Martinez-Gruninger pled guilty to a felony charge of defrauding the Medi-Cal program and will serve two years in state prison for stealing more than $400,000 from the State of California through a scheme that exploited a disabled family member.
California’s In-Home Supportive Services program, known almost universally as IHSS, is the state’s main way of paying for help in the home so that older adults, people who are blind, and people with disabilities—including children—can stay where they live instead of moving into a nursing home or other institution.
IHSS grew out of the independent-living and disability-rights movements of the 1970s and remains one of the largest consumer-directed personal-care programs in the country. Recipients are not patients waiting for an agency to assign a worker; they are the employer. They choose who comes through the door, train that person, set the schedule, and can fire them. About seven in ten hire a family member.
Today the program reaches on the order of 850,000 to 900,000 Californians. It is a Medi-Cal benefit, which means federal Medicaid dollars cover a large share of the cost, with the state and each of the 58 counties paying the rest. The California Department of Social Services sets the rules; county social workers do the day-to-day work.
The California Department of Justice received a complaint alleging that Martinez-Gruninger fraudulently claimed to be the In-Home Support Services provider for a disabled family member. According to the complainant — who was the individual’s sole caregiver — they discovered in December 2019 that Martinez-Gruninger secretly applied to be the disabled family member’s In-Home Support Services provider in November 2007. As a result, Martinez-Gruninger allegedly submitted false claims to the IHSS program for over a decade.
The investigation determined that Martinez-Gruninger unlawfully took the State of California’s Medi-Cal program money, intended to defraud the State of California, and presented false IHSS and Respite Care claims for payment totaling $413,643.30.
She pled guilty to a single felony count of Medi-Cal false claims.
The Division of Medi-Cal Fraud & Elder Abuse is a division within the Department of Justice whose mission is to protect the public and the state’s Medi-Cal program from those who defraud taxpayers and divert state health care resources. The investigation was made possible through the collaboration of government agencies and those who reported incidences of Medi-Cal fraud or elder abuse.
The Medi-Cal Fraud & Elder Abuse receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling nearly $78 million for Federal Fiscal Year 2026. The remaining 25 percent, totaling nearly $26 million for Federal Fiscal Year 2026, is funded by the California Attorney General’s Office. Federal Fiscal Year 2026 is from October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026.