A Saugus woman accused of committing health care fraud in Fresno and Kern counties entered into a federal plea agreement with the Department of Justice, according to federal courthouse records.
Judge Jennifer Thurston approved Friday rescheduling a change-of-plea hearing to Nov. 9 for Jesse Zayas, aka Jesse Contreras, after accepting the plea agreement.
Zayas pleaded guilty to the fifth of six counts she was charged with, aggravated identity theft, and in exchange, the prosecution is dropping the other five charges. The crime carries a mandatory term of two years in prison.
The Department of Justice is expected to recommend a sentence of 24 months at November’s hearing. Both sides agreed in the deal that there are no exceptional aggravating factors that would apply to sentencing.
Thurston is not bound to accept the deal, and Zayas cannot change her plea if the judge does not abide by the agreement, per its terms.
Zayas is expected to owe $2.5 million in restitution at the time of her sentencing next month, in addition to the forfeiture of about $77,000 that she agreed came from the fraud, per the plea deal. She also faces a supervised release of up to three years. Based on the charge, she could also face up to a quarter-million-dollar fine.
The deal acknowledges that, as a licensed nurse, Zayas purchased the hospice companies Humane Love in November 2022 and Healing Hands the following April.
The companies billed Medicare more than $2.5 million in fees for care, claiming there were more than 120 patients. Only four were certified by an actual medical doctor, who was not named in the complaint. He was paid $84,000 from June 2023 to February 2025.
Federal agents searched her home in May 2025 and found $77,000 in cash and a counting machine under her bed.
“This case began in September 2023, when a service coordinator at a Salvation Army Retirement Residence in Fresno reported to the FBI that representatives of Humane Love and Healing Hands were going door-to-door signing its residents up for hospice services even though the residents were not terminally ill,” according to the complaint filed against Zayas.
“The patients explained that either a nurse or sales representative had knocked on their doors and signed them up for hospice care by asking for their Medicare information,” the federal complaint states. “After being enrolled, some of them received prescriptions and other medical equipment such as wheelchairs in the mail. The patients further explained that every few weeks, a nurse would visit them to take their blood pressure. They estimated that the visits lasted five minutes or less.”
