Fraud has been all over the news since Donald Trump resumed office in January 2025. First, Elon Musk and DOGE went to work and uncovered abuse at USAID and elsewhere; independent journalists like Nick Shirley and RedState’s own Jennifer Van Laar regularly expose the epic graft targeting state and federal programs; and Director for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz and “Fraud Czar” Vice President JD Vance have made it their mission to crack down on the con jobs.
What’s so shocking about the crimes when they are uncovered is just how brazen the perps often were, and how they didn’t even try to hide their operations because they knew nobody was checking. See: Minnesota’s infamous “Learing Center.”
(Possible) case in point: a respiratory therapist named Curtis Kurkova, who allegedly received millions from California Medicaid and lived the high life, including buying a $28 million mansion next to the Kardashians. That’s not exactly keeping a low profile.
City Journal reports:
How is Medi-Cal spending $226 billion per year?
— Kenneth Schrupp (@kennethschrupp) September 2, 2026
One respiratory therapist is flying private and buying mansions after scaling his Medi-Cal billing to tens of millions of dollars per year, despite having an apparent “ghost” business.
Our @CityJournal team has the receipts. https://t.co/6czrLyGdOS
“The experts told us it had all the red flags for fraud.” Ya think?
Kurkova’s social media accounts are full of videos of him and his husband Christian frolicking in hot spots around the world, posing in one of their several mansions, and flying on private jets. Guess I should have become a respiratory therapist, huh?
No one has been charged, but has anyone in government checked why the company that billed only $8,000 in 2020 was getting reimbursed for $18.8 million four years later? The operation claimed on its website to focus on respiratory products for children, but the authors note HeroCare billed for catheters as well. Claiming almost $19 million in just one year for plastic parts is pretty eye-popping. Nobody thought to at least take a look?
As City Journal reports, it gets worse. “We spent months following the money trail and found something very strange. There's no evidence that their company even exists.”
Their website doesn't work. They have empty social media accounts. And when you call the phone number, nobody answers. The mailbox is not currently accepting messages. We wanted to take a look at their physical operation, so we drove to HeroCare's address in Chino, but the business wasn't there.
The reporters made further efforts to verify the business and/or get in touch with Kurkova, but had no luck.
Do Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state of California care about what appears to be massive fraud going down regularly within their borders? It sure doesn’t seem like it — Newsom signed AB 2624 in late August, which some have labeled the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” (although the Dems were already working on the plan before his investigations went viral). The bill basically criminalizes investigative reporting and protects “immigration support services providers” and their employees, volunteers, and household members from scrutiny (among other censorious provisions disguised as "protections").
As City Journal notes, HeroCare looks like an obvious case of fraud, and if it is, “It's time for President Trump to shut this down.”
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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