Houston home health owner sentenced to 75 months after taping old doctors' signatures onto new visit records
Paul Njoku, 64, owned and ran Opnet Health Care Services Inc., doing business as P & P Health Care Services, a Fort Bend County, Texas home health agency. From 2015 to 2019, Opnet billed Medicare more than $400,000 for home health claims and received over $360,000, often without the documentation Medicare requires. When Medicare asked for records, trial evidence showed Njoku, or people working at his direction, cut signatures off old doctors' orders and nursing notes and taped them onto newly created ones, including continuing to use a registered nurse's signature for two years after she had left the agency, without her knowledge. A witness also testified Njoku bribed a doctor to approve home health services. A Houston federal jury convicted him on all counts after a three-day trial in May 2025, deliberating less than two hours; the defense's attempt to blame another person did not persuade them. US District Judge Alfred H. Bennett sentenced Njoku in August 2025 to 75 months in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $360,000
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Home health aide fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-24
The facts, as recorded
- Paul Njoku, 64, owned and operated Opnet Health Care Services Inc., doing business as P & P Health Care Services, a home health agency in Fort Bend County, Texas.
- From 2015 to 2019, Opnet billed Medicare more than $400,000 for home health claims and received over $360,000 in reimbursement, often without the documentation Medicare requires to support the claims.
- After Medicare requested records, Njoku or others working at his direction cut signatures off old doctors' orders, nursing notes and nursing assessments and taped them onto newly created documents.
- Njoku kept using the signature of a registered nurse who left Opnet in 2017 on nursing notes and assessments created in 2018 and 2019, without her knowledge or consent, which formed the basis of an identity theft charge.
- A trial witness testified that Njoku bribed a doctor to approve home health services for patients.
- A Medicare program representative testified that Medicare would not have paid the claims had it known there was no supporting documentation or that records had been falsified.
- A Houston federal jury convicted Njoku on all counts, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, two counts of false statements relating to health care matters, and identity theft, after a three-day trial in May 2025, deliberating less than two hours.
- The defense argued at trial that another person was responsible; the jury did not accept that argument.
- US District Judge Alfred H. Bennett sentenced Njoku on August 28, 2025, to 75 months in federal prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release.
- The case was investigated by the FBI, the HHS Office of Inspector General and the Texas Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, and prosecuted by Assistant US Attorneys Christian Latham and Kathryn Olson of the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas.
Why this case matters
Njoku’s case shows the paper-trail-fabrication stage of this scheme in detail, cutting real signatures off old documents and taping them onto new ones, rather than simply forging a signature from scratch, and doing it for a smaller agency than the scheme’s biggest documented cases. The dollar amount here, a few hundred thousand, is a fraction of the largest case on this page, but the mechanics are the same, and small operators account for a large share of this fraud by volume.
Identity theft of a former employee, not a patient
Most of the identity theft on this site’s other pages targets a patient or a consumer. Here, the person whose identity was used was a registered nurse who had already left the company: her name and credentials kept appearing on records for services supposedly delivered two years after she stopped working there, without her knowledge, which is what turned a billing fraud charge into an identity theft charge as well.
What actually convinced the jury
A Medicare program representative’s trial testimony, that the agency would not have paid these claims had it known the documentation was missing or falsified, is the detail that makes this provably fraud rather than a paperwork lapse: it shows the false records were not incidental but necessary to get paid at all.
The caveat
Njoku was convicted by a federal jury after a three-day trial and has been sentenced. The facts above, including the dollar amounts, the forged-signature method, and the sentence, come from the US Attorney’s Office’s own account of the trial evidence and the sentence imposed, not from an unproven accusation.
Sources
- Houston Home Health Agency Owner Convicted of Leading Medicare Fraud and Identity Theft Scheme. Hoodline. Accessed 2026-10-24. Supports: Njoku's age, his ownership of Opnet/P&P Health Care Services, the $400,000 billed and $360,000 received from 2015 to 2019, the forged signatures, the identity theft of the former nurse, the bribery testimony, the jury's May 2025 conviction on all counts, the maximum penalties, the investigating agencies, and the prosecuting attorneys and judge.
- Agency Owner Convicted Of Medicare Fraud, Identity Theft Scheme. HomeCare magazine. Accessed 2026-10-24. Supports: The same conviction facts, the three-day trial, the jury's deliberation time, the forged signature scheme, the bribery testimony, and the quote attributed to US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei of the Southern District of Texas.
- Jury Convicts Home Health Agency Owner in Medicare Fraud and Identity Theft Scheme. HHS Office of Inspector General. Accessed 2026-10-24. Supports: Njoku's identity, the Opnet/P&P Health Care Services name, the jury conviction after a three-day trial, and the forged-signature method.
- Home Health & Hospice Fraud Enforcement in Texas. Hughes & Coleman / HCH Lawyers (legal industry blog). Accessed 2026-10-24. Supports: The August 28, 2025 sentencing date and the 75-month sentence, citing the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas.