The owner of California's two largest home health care businesses has pleaded guilty to health care fraud that cost Medicare $40 million.

Lourdes "Lulu" Perez, 53, of San Diego entered the plea Tuesday in federal court as part of a settlement in which she, her husband and her two businesses repaid $33.9 million to the government, prosecutors said.

Perez is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 16 by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson. Prosecutors have recommended that she be sentenced to 46 months in prison, but she could get up to 59 years in prison.

Perez was the owner of Los Angeles-based Provident Home Health Care and San Dimas-based Tri-Regional Home Health Care, which billed Medicare for work that was never performed.

The companies were "the epicenter of home health care fraud in Southern California," U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang said Tuesday.

Perez came under federal investigation after a payroll clerk at Provident filed a whistleblower lawsuit in 2003. The government intervened in the case and got one of her coconspirators to agree to plead guilty.

Margaret Tan, 29, a former director of nursing at Provident, was cooperating with prosecutors in the ongoing investigation of others involved in the elaborate fraud scheme. Tan was scheduled to enter a plea Oct. 23, prosecutors said.

"The cooperation we have obtained from key figures in this fraud has assisted us in recovering a particularly large amount of fraudulently obtained proceeds," Yang said.
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