Canfield offices used in Medicare fraud

Staff and wire reports

CLAVELAND

A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health-care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program’s history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

Six people are charged in Ohio with stealing identities of doctors and patients to bill Medicare for more than $40 million worth of fraudulent charges.

Some of those suspects set up fronts for false practices of doctors whose identities were stolen, federal agents said. Those locations included offices in Canfield, they said. Suspects leased office space at 23 Lisbon St. in November 2007, agents said.

The indictments were unsealed as part of a nationwide sweep in which 73 people were indicted in New York, Georgia, California and New Mexico. The suspects are believed to be part of an Armenian organized-crime ring, said Steven M. Dettelbaugh, United States attorney for the Northern District of Ohio; C. Frank Figliuzzi, special agent in Charge of the FBI’s Cleveland office; and Special Agent in Charge Lamont Pugh III, Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations.

The suspects stole identities of 12 doctors, including two from Ohio, agents said. The group stole identities of hundreds of Medicare recipients, including four from Ohio, they said.

Those indicted in U.S. District Court in Cleveland are Karen Chilyan, 25, Burbank, Calif.; Eduard Oganesyan, 34, Glendale, Calif.; Lilit Galstyan, 47, Encino, Calif.; Arus Gyulbudakyan, 30, Woodland Hills, Calif.; Julieta Ghazaryan, 48, Glendale, Calif.; and Marine Movsisyan, 43, Studio City, Calif.

Charges include mail fraud, wire fraud and health-care fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering.