How Did HeroCare Make $40 Million?

Curtis Kurkova lives in a $28 million mansion. The estate is nestled within a gated and guarded neighborhood in Hidden Hills, California. Its modern exterior, massive windows, and backyard pool are fit for a magazine feature.

Kurkova, a licensed respiratory practitioner, signed a document for the property as a member of an LLC. In January, he signed another document for the estate confirming that a bank had loaned him nearly $19 million. Three months later, he uploaded pictures of the mansion to Instagram with the caption “Checkmate.”

Medicaid data appear to show that Kurkova’s company, HeroCare, made at least $40.5 million from the program since 2020. The bulk of that cash—about $34.4 million—was paid out between 2023 and 2024.

As the business hit it big, Curtis’s husband, Christian, flaunted the couples’ wealth online. A since-deleted video on Christian’s Instagram showed him opening a box of shoes while mouthing a meme: “It’s when you buy something for your business, and the government pays you back for it.” In 2023, he posted a picture of the couple kissing on a private jet, captioned “It’s giving Narcos, but the Moneys clean!”

But is the money clean? We spent the last three months tracing the cash and speaking to fraud experts, who told us that the Kurkovas’ taxpayer-funded business raised serious questions.

HeroCare appears to have earned most of its Medicaid revenue between 2020 and 2024 from a handful of basic plastic commodities. How did the company sell enough plastic tubes to support a $40 million empire?

HeroCare is almost a ghost. The company’s digital presence amounts to a sparsely populated website and a Facebook page with fewer than 30 followers. The website contains no information about manager Curtis Kurkova, and its “Shop” page is empty. As we reported this piece, the “Featured Products” section disappeared altogether.

We made multiple calls to the number listed on the website in hopes of asking basic questions. After no one answered, we got on the road.

Our first stop was the address on HeroCare’s website. We arrived at a Chino medical plaza and headed to Unit 109, which the company listed as its street address on its most recently available Statement of Interest form. We rang the bell and a woman answered the door.

“Hero Heath Care? I’m not sure,” she said. “This is Pristine Home Health.”

We headed for Van Nuys, where HeroCare claimed on the form to have a mailing address. When we arrived at the site, we saw a small paper “HeroCare” sign taped to the window. The door was locked, and two brochures were stuck in the doorframe. When we returned weeks later, the HeroCare sign was gone.

Finally, City Journal team members drove to Curtis Kurkova’s Hidden Hills mansion and rang the doorbell. They could hear a dog barking inside, but no one answered the door.

In 2018, Curtis and Christian adopted a baby girl. The following year, the couple got married in Napa Valley. Their wedding website asked attendees for help funding their “dream honeymoon to Thailand.”

In 2020, their fortunes began to change. The couple signed a deed of trust on a home in Riverside County for $1.1 million, putting down $110,000 and mortgaging the rest. Then, within the next three years, three more homes were deeded either to Curtis and Christian, including a $4.7 million home in Sherman Oaks, a $1.45 million home in Big Bear, and a $9.8 million home in Encino. “Just closed escrow on our Home Away From Home . . . Two escrows in one year ! Another one for the Portfolio,” Christian wrote on Facebook in 2022.

State filings list three of the homes in their portfolio of past and present properties as rentals, including the new $28 million mansion.  We asked Curtis to clarify whether he and/or Christian rented or owned the Riverside, Sherman Oaks, Big Bear, Encino, and Hidden Hills properties. He did not respond.

As we sifted through documents, we noticed some unusual patterns. A recent deed for the couple’s Big Bear City home, which they sold to another couple, revealed that Curtis Kurkova wasn’t always Curtis Kurkova. He previously went by Curtis Ray Hotchkiss Jr. and legally petitioned to change his name in 2023.

The businesses that Curtis formed changed names, too. Between July 2024 and June 2025, Curtis created a separate entity and cycled through multiple LLCs: HeroCare East LLC, Hero Healthcare Group, HeroCare 2 LLC, before ultimately filing a certificate of cancellation, stating that HeroCare 2 “has not conducted any business.”

Someone who appears to be Curtis’s brother, Michael Amar—a licensed respiratory practitioner previously known as Michael Hotchkiss—formed a separate company, Hero Healthcare Group, in 2025. Amar’s company lists the same phone number as one that HeroCare listed as its own number in a 2023 Facebook post.

We called Michael to ask about the situation. He repeatedly emphasized that Hero Healthcare Group is not the same company as HeroCare LLC.

A California Department of Public Health official sent us documents confirming that medical-equipment-distribution licenses under the names Michael Hotchkiss and Curtis Kurkova expired in May and June of this year, respectively. The official could not find a license under the name Michael Amar but said that HeroCare’s Van Nuys address still has an active site license.

We asked Curtis Kurkova and Michael Amar for comment on the department’s records. Neither of them responded.

California has long been a gold mine for Medicaid fraudsters. As City Journal reported, HHS sources have estimated that Medi-Cal’s fraud rate is 25 percent since 2019.

Officials have not publicly accused HeroCare of misconduct. Companies that offer similar services, however, have faced fraud investigations in the last five years. In 2021, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a $3.31 million settlement with SuperCare Health Inc., one of HeroCare’s competitors in the respiratory equipment space. According to the press release, SuperCare “defraud[ed] the state and federal government by knowingly billing Medicare and Medi-Cal for servicing ventilators that were no longer medically necessary.”

In 2024, New York U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced a $25.5 million settlement with Lincare, Inc., which resolved claims that the company had “fraudulently continu[ed] to bill federal health care programs for the rental of costly non-invasive ventilators . . . when patients no longer needed or used the devices.”

HeroCare’s promotional materials suggest the company focuses on pediatric respiratory products. On its website, the company claims that it “specializes in only respiratory products for children.” Federal data, however, show that HeroCare made about 30 percent of its Medicaid revenue between 2020 and 2024 billing for urinary catheter codes.

The company’s rapid growth raises more significant questions. In 2020, HeroCare received at least $7,800 from Medicaid. In 2021, that figure jumped to $396,500. In 2022 and 2023, it exploded to $5.68 million and $15.56 million, respectively. Finally, in 2024, the company collected a staggering $18.86 million.

Fraud expert Sam Adolphsen, a former chief operating officer for Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, said that HeroCare’s billing increases raised red flags.

“Huge year over year billing increases, with claims for multiple types of urinary catheters, from a specialty respiratory shop, billed to nearly identical patient counts month after month, by a provider bragging about private jets—that raises a lot of questions that must be resolved,” he said. “This appears to be, by definition, a credible allegation of fraud, in a state where the political leadership seems to totally ignore fraud.”

Fraud specialist and CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, Haywood Talcove, thinks state and federal authorities should check HeroCare’s books.

“Medicaid fraud often reveals itself through outliers,” he said. “HeroCare Medical is a California-based respiratory equipment and supply company serving medically fragile children, including children who need tracheostomy, ventilation, oxygen, and other home respiratory support. That is an extremely small and vulnerable population. The growth from roughly $8,000 in 2020 to more than $18.8 million in 2024—and about $40 million from 2020 through 2024—is the kind of statistical anomaly that demands a serious investigation. At a minimum, DOJ, HHS-OIG, and California Medicaid officials should determine whether the services were medically necessary, actually delivered, and properly billed.”

We reached out to Curtis Kurkova, Christian Kurkova, and Michael Amar with a list of assertions ahead of publication. As part of our request, we sent Curtis our reported HeroCare billing totals. None of the three responded to our messages.

After we sent the requests, a lawyer who identified himself as “Mike” called City Journal. He accused us of being “homophobic” and, when asked about Curtis Kurkova’s business dealings, refused to answer whether HeroCare was currently in operation. Before hanging up, he suggested that he might not be representing Kurkova at all.

City Journal team members went back to the $28 million mansion in Hidden Hills to ask the couple about HeroCare’s billing practices, but this time, the gates in front of the estate were shut tight. A Ferrari and a Genesis were parked in the driveway. Eventually, a Tesla left the house, but Curtis Kurkova wasn’t inside. Curtis and HeroCare, it seems, have vanished into thin air.