Federal prosecutors were authorized to seize more than $2 million from a Pasadena-based wound-care clinic accused of defrauding Medicare for reimbursements for skin graft substitutes and skin grafts that never were performed, officials announced Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia Rosenberg granted the government’s request Monday to seize the funds from a bank account linked to Expert Wound Care PC.
According to an affidavit filed with a federal seizure warrant, from September 2025 to this month, Expert Wound Care submitted more than $46.6 million in claims to Medicare for skin substitute products and wound-care services purportedly provided to 78 beneficiaries, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Medicare approved payments of nearly $34 million on the claims, which included skin substitutes and skin grafts as well as skin application procedures, the DOJ said.
From January 2025 to last June, the national average for a billing provider’s allowed amount per claim for skin substitute grafts was $16,837. From July 2025 to March 2026, Expert Wound Care averaged about $37,449 in allowed amount per claim for substitute skin grafts, papers filed in Los Angeles federal court show.
According to the DOJ, from October 2025 to February 2026, Expert Wound Care billed Medicare for about $2.6 million and was paid roughly $2 million for skin substitute grafts and 52 skin graft application services purportedly provided to one beneficiary.
Law enforcement determined that the beneficiary did not receive any skin grafts as part of his treatment and did not receive any type of home service in December 2025 despite the fact that Expert Wound Care filed 27 claims for services on the beneficiary’s behalf for that month, the DOJ stated.
Federal prosecutors said Expert Wound Care’s percentage of total beneficiaries receiving substitute skin grafts was more than six times the national average.
Earlier this month, federal officials announced a new crackdown on hospice and health care fraud in California and Los Angeles County by the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and other federal agencies.
“The Southern California region is a high-risk environment for hospice-related and many other forms of health care fraud,” Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, in a statement. said previously. “The United States loses hundreds of billions of dollars annually to healthcare fraud at the expense of all American taxpayers, whose benefits decrease as premiums, co-payments and taxes grow.”