Federal officials announced that five people were arrested this week in Los Angeles for an alleged scheme to defraud the Medicare program of more than $15 million.
The U.S. Department of Justice said three of the San Fernando Valley residents who were arrested: Petros Fichidzhyan, also known as Peter; Juan Carlos Esparza; and Karpis Srapyan, also known as Tony Levy, were accused of running “phony hospice companies” and submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services.
In an indictment unsealed this week, federal prosecutors alleged that the three had sought Medicare payments for patients who were not terminally ill and had not been cared for in the sham hospices. In some cases, the men claimed that the same patient had received care at more than one of the sham hospices, prosecutors alleged.
As part of the alleged scheme, the three defendants misappropriated doctors' identifying information to claim that those doctors had deemed hospice services necessary for patients, federal prosecutors said.
They also allegedly used the names and Social Security numbers of Russian and Ukrainian citizens who had left the United States to open bank accounts and sign leases, indicating that the “impersonated identities” were the owners of the hospice companies that fact they controlled, according to the federal indictment.
The alleged scheme took place between approximately February 2019 and January 2023, according to the indictment. Two other San Fernando Valley residents, Susanna Harutyunyan and her spouse Mihran Panosyan, also known as Mike Hope, were accused of working with the other defendants to launder the money.
Federal officials said that if convicted, the five defendants would face a maximum sentence of at least 40 years in prison. Fichidzhyan, Esparza and Srapyan would face an additional mandatory minimum of two years in prison for alleged identity theft.
A lawyer representing Fichidzhyan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Times could not immediately identify representatives of the other defendants in court documents.
The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Office of Inspector General of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Federal officials said the arrests were part of a larger effort to crack down on hospice fraud in the Los Angeles area.
A Times investigation three and a half years ago found “audacious and widespread fraud” in the hospice industry. A state audit in 2022 echoed those findings and concluded that weak oversight had opened the door to “large-scale fraud and abuse.” It warned of “hospice agencies using possibly stolen identities of medical staff.”
