Raleigh man pleads guilty in $85 million Medicare fraud case

James Shuford Price III, a 59-year-old Raleigh resident, pleaded guilty in federal court in Wilmington on June 24 to paying illegal kickbacks for referrals to his California lab and filing a false federal tax return.

Price owned and operated Golden Star Labs in Los Angeles, where the company submitted more than $85 million in false claims to the California Medical Assistance Program, known as Medi-Cal, and more than $11 million in false claims to Medicare. The fraudulent billing centered on multi-panel COVID-19, flu and RSV tests, and the scheme ran from August 2023 through June 2025. The lab paid more than $17 million to collectors for fake test samples obtained through fraudulent means, including identity theft, then billed Medi-Cal and Medicare for those samples. Price also directed the company to create fake contracts with collectors to make the operation appear lawful.

Price faces a statutory maximum sentence of 13 years in prison, a $500,000 fine and three years of supervised release. He must also pay restitution to Medi-Cal, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Internal Revenue Service and others. Investigators and the FBI seized more than $6 million in assets linked to the scheme.

The case involved thousands of illegitimate laboratory test claims, with paperwork made to look legitimate while the underlying samples were fake.

The 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown led to criminal charges against 324 defendants and more than $14.6 billion in intended losses, according to the HHS Office of Inspector General, the largest takedown in Justice Department history. California intensified enforcement around Medi-Cal fraud, including an April 2026 crackdown on hospice and identity-theft schemes tied to more than $267 million in improper claims.