FRESNO— On November 6, 2023, Jeremy Gober, 42, of Hanford, pleaded guilty to health care fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for submitting more than $1.5 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medi-Cal for sleep studies.

Gober co-owned and co-operated Got Sleep Inc., which operated sleep clinics in Fresno and Orange Counties. Sleep clinics perform diagnostic sleep studies to identify disorders like sleep apnea and narcolepsy.

According to court documents, between August 2016 and July 2020, Gober caused Got Sleep to submit thousands of claims to Medicare and Medi-Cal for sleep studies that were not actually performed on patients. The claims also stated falsely that the patients had been referred for the sleep studies by physicians with whom Gober had previously worked. This was done because Medicare and Medi-Cal will not pay for a sleep study unless the patient was referred by a physician.

This case is the product of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the California Department of Health Care Services. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Barton is prosecuting the case.

U.S. District Judge Ana de Alba is scheduled to sentence Gober on March 4, 2024. He faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison for the health care fraud conviction and an additional, mandatory two years in prison for the identity theft conviction. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.

In September 2023, Jeremy Gober’s brother, Travis Gober, pleaded guilty to similar health care fraud and aggravated identity theft charges related to other sleep clinics in the Central Valley.