Jeannie Choi is accused of using access obtained through her funeral-home employment to supply personal information that prosecutors say helped transform recently deceased Medicare beneficiaries into purported hospice patients
WASHINGTON, DC — A Los Angeles-area mortuary employee allegedly became an essential source of personal information for a hospice billing operation that prosecutors say used recently deceased Medicare beneficiaries to create false patient files and obtain federal payments for care never delivered.
Jeannie Choi, 57, of Torrance, is among three defendants named in a 16-count federal indictment alleging healthcare fraud, aggravated identity theft, kickbacks, and related conduct tied to about $27,731,000 in claims submitted by four Southern California hospice companies.
Federal prosecutors contend that Choi obtained access to deceased people’s identifying information through her employment at a California-licensed funeral home, then supplied selected records to hospice operator Oren David Shachar with assistance from co-defendant Abraham Shin during portions of 2025.
The allegations remain unproven, Choi and her co-defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, and an indictment records accusations approved by a grand jury rather than factual findings reached after testimony, documents, and competing explanations receive courtroom examination.
A Mortuary Employee at the Alleged Information Gateway
The government’s federal indictment describing the Los Angeles hospice case identifies Choi, also known as Jeannie Im, as an employee of an unnamed funeral business that held a California license and operated locations across the Los Angeles area.
Prosecutors deliberately refer to the employer only as Business 1, leaving its public identity undisclosed while alleging that Choi’s workplace position gave her access to records containing information unusually valuable to anyone attempting to reconstruct a medical episode around an actual death.
The indictment does not publicly specify Choi’s exact job title, departmental responsibilities, access permissions, training history, or employment dates beyond stating that she worked there since at least 2025, details that could become significant when lawyers examine authorization and knowledge.
The Justice Department’s national case summary describes Choi as an employee of a Los Angeles-based mortuary, supporting the characterization of her as a mortuary worker without establishing that every task she performed involved preparing bodies, directing funerals, counseling families, or maintaining protected records.
That distinction matters because funeral businesses include directors, arrangers, administrators, transport personnel, embalmers, reception staff, record specialists, contractors, and other workers whose duties create very different reasons for viewing or transmitting sensitive information after someone has died.
The Personal Information Prosecutors Say Choi Supplied
According to prosecutors, Choi accessed names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and Medicare identification numbers through her employment, giving the alleged hospice network the core identifiers needed to determine whether a deceased person had federal coverage while alive.
The indictment further alleges that Choi and Shin sent Shachar images of identification documents through text messages and WhatsApp, alongside exact dates and times of death, primary-care physician names, and contact information identifying each deceased person’s next of kin.
Those fields could collectively provide far more operational value than a simple name because they connect an authentic identity with insurance eligibility, a fixed death chronology, a recent medical relationship, reachable relatives, and documents that can make a fabricated file appear administratively credible.
Prosecutors have not publicly disclosed how many individuals Choi allegedly researched, which workplace systems she accessed, whether she printed or photographed records, or whether every item later appearing in hospice files originated directly from the funeral business.
Those unanswered questions do not erase the accusation, but they illustrate why criminal responsibility must be established record by record, with reliable evidence showing what Choi accessed, what she transmitted, what she understood, and how the information was ultimately used.
Why Funeral Records Can Become an Identity Target
Funeral homes routinely receive accurate personal details at an exceptionally vulnerable moment, including legal names, birth dates, Social Security information, family contacts, death certificates, disposition instructions, medical examiner documents, physician details, insurance records, and authorization forms required for administrative work.
Much of that information must move quickly among relatives, hospitals, cemeteries, crematories, clergy, insurers, government registries, transportation providers, and estate representatives, producing legitimate information exchanges that can become difficult to distinguish from unauthorized activity without strong auditing and access controls.
A deceased person can no longer notice an unfamiliar Medicare notice, question a hospice enrollment, challenge an incorrect diagnosis, review an electronic chart, or tell relatives that no nurse visited, making post-death identity misuse materially harder to detect through ordinary consumer vigilance.
Families may also assume that requests for medical details, identification images, or signatures are connected with burial arrangements, insurance claims, death registration, transportation, or estate administration, particularly when those requests come from someone associated with a trusted funeral business.
The Los Angeles hospice fraud allegations therefore present an insider-risk problem spanning healthcare and death-care institutions, because lawful workplace access can allegedly become the first link in a chain that converts accurate private information into false clinical records and federal claims.
How the Alleged Transfer Chain Worked
Prosecutors say Shachar purchased identifying information for deceased Medicare beneficiaries from Choi and Shin, who allegedly functioned as patient marketers connecting funeral-home data, recently bereaved families, and hospice companies controlled by Shachar across the greater Los Angeles region.
Once information arrived, Shachar allegedly determined whether the deceased person had been enrolled in Medicare and could have received hospice coverage while alive, screening out identities that would not support the reimbursement narrative prosecutors say the operation intended to construct.
If the deceased person appeared usable, Choi, Shachar, or a nurse working for Shachar would allegedly meet surviving relatives at the funeral business or contact them by telephone, collecting personal health details that could supplement the beneficiary’s authentic identity and recent medical history.
Employees from Shachar’s office would then allegedly request records from recent hospital visits, while a nurse, an unnamed physician, and others were directed to create backdated electronic documents describing evaluations and terminal-illness certifications that prosecutors contend had not occurred as represented.
The resulting file allegedly portrayed the beneficiary as having entered hospice before death, allowing a real identity, real illness history, real physician relationship, and real death to support an invented chronology of enrollment and end-of-life services billed through a participating provider.
Families Allegedly Entered the Process After Death
The government alleges that relatives were approached after Shachar reviewed the deceased person’s eligibility and background, meaning family contact allegedly occurred after people participating in the purported operation had already assessed the potential billing value of the identity.
Shachar allegedly required the funeral business to preserve accurate death dates and times so he could prepare his own records and arrange meetings where next of kin would sign hospice enrollment paperwork relating to someone who had already died.
The indictment does not explain what every relative was told, whether paperwork visibly contained earlier dates, whether signatures were knowingly retroactive, or whether family members believed they were completing ordinary insurance, funeral, hospital, or final-care documentation during an overwhelming period.
Relatives could become pivotal witnesses because they may describe whether any hospice representative contacted the beneficiary while alive, whether a nurse visited, whether a physician discussed terminal eligibility, and when the first request for hospice paperwork actually appeared.
Defense counsel may examine memory, language, authorization, document presentation, grief, and interactions with individual employees, while prosecutors must connect each family encounter to specific records, communications, payments, and claims rather than relying on the emotional power of bereavement alone.
Rules Allegedly Designed to Reduce Obvious Contradictions
Prosecutors say Shachar imposed several conditions upon marketers supplying deceased beneficiaries, allegedly accepting only people who died at home, died within five days after marketer contact, and were not already receiving hospice care from another provider when death occurred.
A death inside a hospital, nursing facility, or other institution could generate contemporaneous records from independent professionals whose timestamps, observations, and billing activity might conflict with a later-created hospice narrative, making a home death potentially easier to reconstruct without immediate contradiction.
An existing hospice enrollment could likewise create overlapping claims, competing care plans, clinician testimony, family familiarity, and electronic records demonstrating that another provider already held responsibility for the beneficiary’s legitimate end-of-life services when the person died.
The alleged five-day window kept each proposed identity close to a recent death, preserving accessible relatives, current hospital records, accurate medical details, and a narrow period into which fabricated assessments or certifications could be placed before the known time of death.
These conditions remain prosecutorial allegations, yet their specificity could allow investigators to test communications and claim data for repeating patterns, including home deaths, compressed timelines, late-created notes, marketer contacts, and enrollment dates clustered immediately before recorded deaths.
Payments Allegedly Attached a Price to Deceased Referrals
The indictment alleges that Shachar paid Choi and Shin between at least $1,000 and $3,000 for every deceased beneficiary referral ultimately enrolled, creating a compensation structure whose value depended upon whether supplied information could become a billable hospice episode.
For one separate living beneficiary identified only by initials, prosecutors allege that Shachar offered and paid Choi approximately $300 during September 2025 for a referral, although the corresponding Anti-Kickback Statute count is charged against Shachar rather than Choi.
That allocation should be reported carefully, because Choi is accused through the conspiracy, healthcare fraud, and aggravated identity theft counts, while the indictment’s standalone kickback counts charge Shachar for allegedly paying remuneration to Choi and Shin on specified referral dates.
Financial records, cash withdrawals, bank deposits, payment applications, messages, calendars, and witness accounts could help determine whether money followed successful enrollments, while the absence of conventional invoices may require prosecutors to establish the purpose of disputed transfers through circumstantial evidence.
Defense lawyers could argue that particular payments represented unrelated work, reimbursement, wages, loans, gifts, or other lawful transactions, requiring the government to prove that Choi knowingly accepted compensation tied to referrals or identity transfers that served the alleged Medicare scheme.
The Charges That Directly Name Choi
Count one charges Choi, Shachar, and Shin with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, alleging that Choi joined no later than May 2025 and continued through at least November 2025, within a broader operation prosecutors date from February 2021 through March 2026.
Counts seven, eight, and nine accuse all three defendants of executing healthcare fraud through three claims submitted during September and November 2025 by Art of Hospice, Holly Trinity Hospice, and Gentle Touch Hospice for beneficiaries identified publicly only through initials.
Those three charged claims sought approximately $420, $220, and $850, comparatively modest amounts that may serve as specific alleged executions within a much larger scheme rather than representing the total reimbursement prosecutors attribute to identities associated with Choi.
Counts ten through twelve charge all three defendants with aggravated identity theft involving the same three beneficiaries, alleging knowing transfer, possession, or use of names, Social Security numbers, and Medicare identifiers without lawful authority during the corresponding healthcare fraud offenses.
The government must prove each offense’s distinct elements, meaning evidence that Choi viewed a funeral record would not automatically establish that she transmitted it unlawfully, understood a hospice claim would follow, joined a fraud agreement, or possessed the knowledge required for aggravated identity theft.
Four Hospices and Nearly $27 Million in Alleged Claims
The indictment collectively labels Gentle Touch Hospice Care in Valley Glen, Oxford Hospice Care in Montclair, Art of Hospice in Encino, and Holly Trinity Hospice in Glendale as the Shachar Hospices, although each maintained a separate corporate identity and Medicare relationship.
Across the alleged conspiracy, those companies submitted approximately $27,731,000 for services prosecutors characterize as medically unnecessary, reimbursement-ineligible, not provided as represented, or procured through inducements, while Medicare allegedly paid approximately $26,908,000 on the challenged claims.
Those totals cover more than the deceased-beneficiary channel involving Choi, because the wider indictment also describes living patients allegedly recruited without terminal illness, beneficiaries paid to remain enrolled, marketer compensation, concealed coverage consequences, and a separate sale of nine Medicare identifiers.
Contemporary FOX 11 Los Angeles reporting on the hospice investigation placed the case within a nationwide enforcement operation, while noting that authorities had not disclosed the affected deceased beneficiaries’ full identities or the complete extent of funeral-industry involvement.
Separating aggregate figures from defendant-specific conduct remains essential, because prosecutors allege that Choi participated during only part of 2025 and must establish which claims, identities, messages, payments, and alleged decisions can legally be attributed to her.
Why Authentic Data Can Defeat Routine Screening
Automated payment systems often detect invalid formats, missing fields, duplicate identifiers, impossible dates, and ineligible providers, yet authentic personal information can pass basic checks even when the clinical story attached to it was allegedly manufactured after the beneficiary died.
A real Medicare number linked with a genuine Social Security record, recognizable hospital history, an actual physician, accurate family contact, and a verified death can give an electronic file surface credibility, leaving fabrication hidden inside timing, authorship, consent, and whether documented services occurred.
Investigators may therefore compare note-creation metadata, user logins, device histories, hospital discharge records, death registries, clinician schedules, call logs, family meetings, funeral-home access records, and claim-submission timestamps to identify when an apparently coherent patient history was actually assembled.
The allegation that information moved through text messages and WhatsApp may create recoverable evidence showing images, recipients, dates, surrounding conversation, and forwarding behavior, although authentication, device ownership, missing messages, shared accounts, and contextual interpretation can become contested issues.
Data accuracy alone cannot protect Medicare when accurate identifiers are used dishonestly, making provenance equally important because institutions must know who obtained information, why access occurred, when records changed, and whether each represented medical event came from an authorized source.
What Prosecutors Must Establish Against Choi
To prove conspiracy, prosecutors generally must demonstrate that Choi knowingly joined an agreement to commit healthcare fraud, not merely that she knew Shachar, communicated with Shin, worked near sensitive records, or introduced people who later became subjects of disputed billing.
The substantive fraud counts require transaction-specific proof connecting Choi with knowingly false claims, while aiding-and-abetting liability would depend upon intentional assistance rather than passive association, accidental disclosure, negligent handling, or conduct performed without understanding the underlying criminal objective.
Aggravated identity theft requires proof involving an actual person’s identifying information, use or transfer without lawful authority, knowledge that the information belonged to another real person, and a sufficient relationship between that conduct and a qualifying felony offense.
Prosecutors may use messages, workplace audit logs, identification photographs, payment evidence, family testimony, claim records, death certificates, and communications with Shachar or Shin to argue that repetition and timing demonstrate deliberate participation rather than misunderstanding or isolated policy violations.
Evidence showing that Choi attended family meetings, discussed Medicare eligibility, tracked exact death times, received payments after enrollment, or selected people meeting Shachar’s alleged rules could be especially significant if independently authenticated and connected with the charged beneficiaries.
How the Defense Could Challenge the Government’s Theory
Choi’s attorneys may dispute whether she possessed authorized access, whether particular images came from her workplace, whether she sent specific messages, whether Shin independently obtained information, or whether Shachar used supplied data for purposes Choi never understood or approved.
They may also challenge witness credibility, payment descriptions, shared devices, translated conversations, metadata interpretation, family recollections, and the assumption that contact after a death necessarily proves awareness that hospice documents were backdated or that claims were submitted to Medicare.
Because funeral employees legitimately communicate with relatives and collect identifying information, context will matter greatly, and conduct that appears suspicious beside the complete indictment may have an ordinary explanation when individual messages, duties, requests, and authorizations are examined separately.
The government may argue that repeated transfers, document images, exact eligibility fields, alleged payments, and conformity with deceased-referral rules collectively exclude innocent explanations, but prosecutors must establish that inference through admissible evidence rather than assertion.
Responsible coverage must therefore distinguish allegations concerning Choi from conduct attributed principally to Shachar, including ownership of the hospices, Medicare enrollment certifications, direction of clinicians, claim submission, beneficiary payments, and the alleged luxury-vehicle transaction charged only against him.
The Broader Insider-Risk Lesson for Funeral Businesses
The case illustrates how employees with ordinary business access can allegedly expose people whose information remains valuable after death, particularly when systems permit broad searches, unmonitored exports, personal-device photography, or messaging outside approved organizational channels.
Funeral companies can reduce that exposure by assigning permissions based on job responsibilities, logging unusual searches, blocking bulk downloads, restricting personal messaging apps, encrypting authorized transfers, and reviewing access by people whose cases are unrelated to an employee’s assigned work.
Managers should also establish clear procedures for hospice inquiries, hospital-record requests, next-of-kin signatures, insurance questions, and third-party referrals, ensuring that employees know when ordinary assistance becomes an unauthorized disclosure or an inappropriate commercial relationship.
Families deserve plain explanations identifying who is requesting information, which organization will receive it, why each document is necessary, whether medical authorization survives death, and how they can confirm a request independently before signing or transmitting sensitive records.
None of these safeguards assumes funeral workers are inherently untrustworthy; most perform difficult duties compassionately, yet institutions handling concentrated identity data need controls that can detect misuse without relying solely on personal integrity.
Identity Theft Does Not End with a Death Certificate
Death closes a life but does not instantly deactivate every identifier, insurance relationship, medical record, government file, mobile account, or financial profile, leaving an administrative identity that persists while institutions update systems on different schedules and under different verification practices.
Fraud involving deceased people can exploit that delay because victims cannot monitor statements, answer verification calls, dispute altered records, or recognize new providers, shifting responsibility toward relatives, data custodians, government matching systems, investigators, and organizations processing post-death transactions.
Amicus International Consulting’s analysis of identity-change methods that can result in arrest explains why appropriating another person’s records differs fundamentally from pursuing lawful changes through authorized courts, registries, citizenship procedures, and government-issued documentation.
That distinction is central to the Choi allegations, because prosecutors do not claim the deceased beneficiaries created alternate identities, but rather that existing identifiers were allegedly transferred without authority and inserted into medical histories representing care before death.
Families who discover unfamiliar hospice activity should preserve notices, contact Medicare through verified channels, review medical and funeral records, ask providers for documentation, and report suspected misuse without confronting individuals who may have evidence or access to additional accounts.
Lawful Identity Continuity Stands on Authorization
Lawful identity change maintains a traceable connection between the individual and authorized records, whether the process involves marriage, divorce, court-approved name change, witness protection, corrected civil registration, adoption, citizenship, or another procedure recognized by the issuing government.
Amicus International Consulting’s overview of legally recognized ways to create a new identity emphasizes official authorization and consistent documentation, principles that stand in contrast to secretly copying identifiers or inventing events in someone else’s healthcare history.
The comparison matters for public understanding because the words new identity, alternate identity, and identity change can describe lawful status transitions, while the federal case alleges unauthorized use of deceased people’s unchanged Social Security numbers and Medicare identifiers for reimbursement.
Hospice billing likewise depends upon continuity, connecting a real beneficiary with a genuine terminal prognosis, informed election, authorized provider, delivered services, accurate dates, and medical documentation created by professionals who actually performed or supervised the represented care.
A National Crackdown with an Individual Burden of Proof
The Shachar case was announced during the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which federal officials described as involving 455 defendants, including 90 licensed medical professionals, across 56 judicial districts and schemes alleging more than $6,500,000,000 in intended fraudulent claims.
Authorities also announced asset seizures, administrative payment suspensions, and provider billing revocations during the coordinated operation, showing how criminal, financial, and regulatory consequences can develop simultaneously while individual accusations remain unresolved in court.
National totals provide enforcement context but cannot establish Choi’s guilt, because prosecutors must prove her knowledge, agreement, transfers, and connection to the specified claims through evidence tied to her conduct rather than unrelated defendants included in a nationwide announcement.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General are investigating, while a Justice Department Fraud Section trial attorney is prosecuting the case through the federal healthcare fraud enforcement structure in Los Angeles.
The original Justice Department announcement said Choi was arrested on June 22 and expected to appear in federal court the following day, while later scheduling, motions, pleas, or trial developments remain subject to the court’s docket and ordinary procedural changes.
A Case About Access, Trust, and Proof
The allegations against Choi highlight the quiet power of administrative access, because an employee need not control a hospice or submit claims personally if prosecutors can prove they knowingly supplied protected information to enable fraudulent billing.
For funeral businesses, the case underscores why sensitive records require durable access histories and clear authorization boundaries, especially when grieving families reasonably trust employees to use personal information only for respectful, necessary, and lawful post-death services.
For Medicare, the alleged scheme shows that validating an identifier is not the same as validating care, since genuine personal data can support an entirely false episode unless claim systems also examine chronology, provenance, clinical participation, and unusual relationships between providers and referral sources.
For Choi, the government’s detailed narrative cannot replace evidence proving her state of mind and conduct beyond a reasonable doubt, while her employment near sensitive records cannot itself establish that she knowingly joined every objective attributed to the larger alleged conspiracy.
Until the charges are resolved through dismissal, plea, trial, or later proceedings, the Los Angeles hospice case remains an allegation that information entrusted to a mortuary employee became fuel for backdated enrollments, identity theft, and Medicare claims involving people already dead.
