Three Southern California men were arrested by federal agents this morning for their role in a Medicare fraud case investigated jointly by the FBI and the Office of the Inspector General - Health and Human Services. Vardeges Egiazarian, 59, of Panorama City, California, Khachatur Arutunyan, 50, Tujunga, California, and Migran Petrosyan, 38, of Burbank, California, were all arrested without incident.
The investigation has revealed that Egiazarian, Arutunyan and Petrosyan, who are not medical professionals, entered into illegal relationships with physicians and laboratories allowing them to establish medical practices using providers’ names and to operate the practices as if they were run by the providers when, in fact, they were not. The three men paid the physicians a relatively small flat fee while billing the Medicare program hundreds of thousands of dollars under the physicians’ provider numbers.
Egiazarian, Arutunyan and Petrosyan are also believed to be responsible for the inappropriate payment of kickbacks to “cappers” who recruit patients on behalf of the clinics. The “cappers” entice patients to visit the clinics by offering free medical equipment or cash payments. After patients visit the clinics and receive their cash payments and/or free goods, Medicare is often billed for an office visit, physical therapy, and/or other procedures and diagnostic tests that were either not needed, not rendered, or both.
All three men will make their initial appearance before a U.S. Magistrate Judge later this afternoon in the Central District of California.
