FBI BUSTS ARMENIAN CRIME SYNDICATE FOR DEFRAUDING MEDICARE OF $163 MILLION
Asbarez
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
NEW YORK-LOS ANGELES
Federal law enforcement authorities have announced charges against
dozens of members of a vast Armenia criminal syndicate that used
phantom health care clinics and stolen identities to fraud Medicare
out of $163 million, the US Department of Justice said Wednesday in
a statement.
Prosecutors in New York and Los Angeles charged 73 people. The
investigation, dubbed Diagnosis Dollars, resulted in the arrests
of 52 people across the U.S. in what authorities described as “the
largest Medicare fraud scheme ever perpetrated by a single criminal
enterprise.”
Those arrested are being charged with credit card fraud, identity
theft, federal racketeering, immigration fraud, and even distribution
of contraband cigarettes and stolen Viagra.
Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning
in New York City and Los Angeles, but there were also arrests in New
Mexico, Georgia and Ohio. In Los Angeles, authorities arrested more
than two dozen Glendale-area residents early Wednesday for their
alleged roles in the nationwide scheme to defraud Medicare.
The lead prosecutor in the case, U.S. attorney for the Southern
District of New York, Preet Bharara, said the “Mirzoyan-Terdjanian”
organization, named after its two alleged leaders, 35-year-old
Davit Mirzoyan and 36-year-old Robert Terdjanian, employed threats,
intimidation, and violence and operated in a classical mafia style.
The scheme’s scope and sophistication “puts the traditional Mafia
to shame,” Bharara said at a Manhattan news conference. “They ran a
veritable fraud franchise.”
The syndicate is accused of submitting the fraudulent claims to
Medicare from at least 118 phantom medical clinics in 25 states.
Investigators say the organization stole the identities of doctors
and filed applications to bill Medicare in their names.
Mirzoyan-Terdjanian is also alleged to have used stolen identities of
approximately 2,900 Medicare patients treated at a New York hospital.
Unlike other cases involving crooked medical clinics bribing people
to sign up for unneeded treatments, the operation was “completely
notional,” Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI’s New York office, said
in a statement.
“There were no real medical clinics behind the fraudulent billings,
just stolen doctors’ identities. There were no colluding patients
signing in at clinics for unneeded treatments, just stolen patient
identities. The whole doctor-patient interaction was a mirage. But
the money was real, while it lasted,” Fedarcyk said in the statement.
“The reach of this organization stretches clear across the country and
well beyond our shores. And so in terms of profitability, geographic
scope, and sheer ambition this emerging international organized
crime syndicate would be the envy of any traditional mafia family,”
Bharara said.
The indictment says most members of the organization were Armenian
nationals or immigrants who maintained substantial ties to Armenia. In
addition to regularly traveling there, they had criminal connections,
transferred criminal proceeds to the country, and bought real estate
and businesses with money from their illegal profits.
Kazarian, who immigrated to the United States in 1996, is identified
in the indictment as “vor v zakone,” or a “thief in the law-code,” a
powerful figure in the criminal underworld of the former Soviet Union.
Bharara said it was the first time a vor, which is “the rough
equivalent of a traditional godfather,” had been charged in a U.S.
racketeering case.
The indictment also accused Robert Terdjanian, 35, of Brooklyn
and others of hatching other schemes involving stolen credit cards,
untaxed cigarettes and counterfeit Viagra. It also alleged that during
a meeting last year at a Brighton Beach restaurant, Terdjanian pulled
a knife on someone who owed him money “and threatened to disembowel
the individual if the debt was not paid.”
A judge jailed Terdjanian without bail on Wednesday at a brief
hearing. Afterward, his attorney said his client denies the charges.
Kazarian and Mirzoyan were scheduled to appear in court Wednesday in
Los Angeles.
Authorities began the New York-based investigation after the
information of more than 2,900 Medicare patients at the Orange Regional
Medical Center in upstate New York, including Social Security numbers
and dates of birth, were reported stolen.
Some of the phony paperwork was a giveaway, investigators said. It
showed eye doctors doing bladder tests; ear, nose and throat
specialists performing pregnancy ultrasounds; obstetricians testing
for skin allergies; and dermatologists billing for heart exams.
If convicted, the defendants face various sentences up to life
imprisonment and up to $500,000 fine.
From: A. Papazian