Badges - FW: 44 Done and Thousands and Thousands to Go...

From: Charles Rahn <c.t.rahn@xxxxxxxx>
To: Badges 1Badge <badges@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:53:20 -0400







Feds 
Arrest 44 in 'Largest-Ever' Medicare Fraud Bust 
 


Nation



Feds Arrest 44 in 'Largest-Ever' Medicare Fraud 
Bust
Updated: 5 hours 8 minutes ago 




 
Deborah 
Hastings ContributorAOL 
News 
(Oct. 14) -- Federal agents 
have busted a massive Armenian-American crime ring that defrauded Medicare of 
$35 million 
through bogus clinics across the country that used the stolen identities of 
doctors and patients, according to indictments unsealed this week.

Preet 
Bharara, the U.S. attorney in New York City, said in a statement that it's the 
"single-largest Medicare fraud ever perpetrated by a single criminal 
enterprise."

 
Louis Lanzano, AP
Robert Terdjanian, an alleged ringleader in a Medicare fraud 
scheme, is led in handcuffs from FBI headquarters in New York City on 
Wednesday. 
Dozens of people on both coasts have been charged by Manhattan 
prosecutors.
Prosecutors charged 44 people in New York, Los 
Angeles, Ohio, New Mexico and Georgia with a variety of offenses, including 
racketeering, health care fraud, identity theft, money laundering and bank 
fraud.

The alleged godfather of the crime syndicate, Armen Kazarian, 46, 
was arrested in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said the "vor," an Armenian word 
meaning "thief-in-law," ruled by intimidation and fear, providing protection to 
members of the group and resolving disputes with threats of violence. Two other 
alleged ringleaders, Davit Mirzoyan, 34, of Glendale, Calif., and Robert 
Terdjanian, 35, of Brooklyn, were also named in the indictment.

The scam 
was brazen in its scope but hardly sophisticated, according to the indictments. 
Fake clinics in 25 states -- some of them no more than a rented mailbox -- sent 
bills to the nation's health care system for procedures that included an 
ultrasound given to a pregnant woman by an ear, nose and throat doctor and 
heart 
tests conducted by a dermatologist.

Bharara called the case "the envy of 
any traditional Mafia family." More than $100 million in phony bills was sent 
to 
Medicare. About $35 million was reimbursed, prosecutors said.

The gang, 
based largely in Los Angeles, was a sprawling identity-theft operation that 
stole the medical license numbers of real doctors and matched them to 
legitimate 
Medicare patients, whose names and billing information were also stolen, 
prosecutors said. About 3,000 of those patient names were lifted from a medical 
center in Middletown, N.Y., authorities said. 

Filed under: Nation, Crime                                        

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Badges - FW: 44 Done and Thousands and Thousands to Go...

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