Gayk Akhsharumov’s ‘biller, consultant,’ has also been ordered to prison and fined millions as well.
PRESS RELEASE: THE FBI UNCOVERED San Gabriel and Broadway Hospice Inc. OF GLENDALE, CALIF.
By JOSH MITCHELL
Editor
River Mississippi News
GLENDALE, CALIF. VIA MISSISSIPPI REPORTING SITE (MARCH 30, 2024, EVENING) — A California hospice owner, its “biller” and “consultant” were sentenced to pay millions of dollars in restitution and serve over a year in prison for defrauding the Medicare system through near-death patients.
Overall, the two companies, which at the time of the fraud were based in Glendale, Calif., which is less than 10 miles north of Los Angeles, stole nearly $10 million by filing false Medicare claims for so-called hospice patient needs, federal authorities announced Friday.
Gayk Akhsharumov, 40, of Glendale and;
Akhsharumov’s biller and consultant, Karen Sarkisyan, with the extra name of “Kevin Sarkisyan.”
Gayk heads San Gabriel Hospice and Palliative Care Inc. and Broadway Hospice Inc., the DOJ news release issued Friday states.
He was sent to prison for a year and fined $9.2 million in restitution.
His consultant and biller, Karen S., with the extra name of “Kevin Sarkisyan,” 45, also lives in Glendale. She was sent to prison for a year, too, and fined almost $4 million.
The felonious Medicare fraud occurred over about a three-year period starting in the New Year of 2018 and stopping around May of 2021, which was during the core-period of the U.S. Coronavirus pandemic.
The Department of Justice, citing court documents, states in a recent press release that, between those years, “Akhsharumov used his two hospice companies to defraud Medicare of approximately $9 million.”
Moreover, the release adds, the scheme also involved significant, “inserted nominee owners” and also “paid kickbacks to patient recruiters and profited from the scheme.”
About a year prior to the Medicare-bilking hospice organization’s demise, it began a separate and devolved scheme to “fraudulently obtain COVID-19 relief funds.”
The companies involved were more plainly called San Gabriel and Broadway Hospice Inc.
Gayk also stole over ninety-thousand dollars that were deposited into San Gabriel’s bank. The money was said to be for the account through the Provider Relief Fund program, a Department of Health and Human Services program that was intended to rapidly distribute pandemic-related funding to health care providers that met certain criteria.
Akhsharumov submitted or caused the submission of fraudulent loan applications to the Small Business Administration for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan and to a financial institution for a Paycheck Protection Program loan, for which San Gabriel received $50,000.
Akhsharumov pleaded guilty on March 13, 2023, to conspiracy to commit health care fraud.
Sarkisyan pleaded guilty on April 3, 2023, to conspiracy to defraud the United States.
This was a Justice Department Criminal Division investigation, including the state of California. Likewise, the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI Criminal Investigative Division in Los Angeles assisted as well as the Office of Inspector General.
It’s part of the Health Care Fraud Strike Force, which took action in 2007, 17 years ago, and has already charged almost 5,500 people and insurers in cases with monetary value of $27 billion, according to federal officials and the Atlanta, Ga.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cited in the release.
