U.S. authorities have announced the filing of criminal charges against 73 members of a predominantly Armenian criminal gang accused of a range of crimes, from grandiose health insurance scams to counterfeit credit card fraud to trafficking in contraband cigarettes and stolen or counterfeit Viagra.
Specifically, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alleges that the defendants opened 118 “phantom” clinics in 25 states across America and billed Medicare, the state’s health care fund for the elderly and disabled, fictitious bills totaling more than $160 million. According to prosecutors, this is the largest scam of its kind in American history.
Of that amount, the perpetrators managed to get $35.7 million in checks from the U.S. government, which were cashed and spent in the U.S. or transferred by various means to Armenia, where, for example, they used them to buy real estate and private companies.
“The Devil’s Swindle”
The peculiarity of this scam was in its ephemeral nature. Fraudsters stole the identities of doctors and opened virtual clinics in their names. They then stole the data of thousands of legitimate Medicare beneficiaries. The fund was sent bills for non-existent services provided by imaginary doctors to mythical patients in non-existent medical facilities.
After a few months, fund administrators began to smell something fishy. Either the patients lived suspiciously far away from the doctor, or the doctors were providing suspicious services. For example, the foundation received bills from a pathologist for admitting living patients. Or an ophthalmologist was asking for payment for a bladder exam. And a gynecologist was billing for treatment of skin allergies.
By then, however, Medicare had typically already paid the scammers hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The scammers knew he would catch on sooner or later, shutting down the clinics themselves after a few months and immediately opening new ones.
In addition to Los Angeles and New York, criminal cases against members of the criminal organization have been opened in Cleveland, Albuquerque (New Mexico) and Savannah (Georgia).
Two criminal cases have been opened in New York City. The first is dominated by Armenian surnames with inclusions of Anna Zaychik and Mikhail Dobrushin, while the second case involves children of different nations, such as Aron Chervin, Vyacheslav Dobrer, Harold Piña, Robert Terdjanian, Yuri Zelinsky, William Gibbs, Milana Nyhman or Bigi Francois.
The defendants in the first case involving Medicare fraud face sentences of up to life in prison. The defendants in the second case face up to 20 years in prison. They are mainly charged with defrauding private insurance companies by submitting fictitious bills to them for the treatment of car accident victims. The crashes were often staged, authorities say, the medical care provided to patients was unnecessary or mythical.
“From the perpetrators’ point of view,” notes FBI New York Division Chief Janice Fedarsik, ”the devilish beauty of the Medicare scam was that it was completely virtual. There were no real clinics behind the fictitious accounts, just stolen physician identities. There were no bribed patients signing up at the clinic for unnecessary procedures. There were only stolen patient identities … But the money was real.”
“Shootings” and showdown
Prosecutors call the exposed criminal group the “Mirzoyan-Terdzhanyan Organization” after the names of its alleged leaders, 34-year-old Davit Mirzoyan, who lives in Los Angeles, and 34-year-old New Yorker Robert Terdzhanyan. The latter also used the names Oleg Kamarin and Robert Vovk, after his wife Galina Vovk, who is named in the second case.
Court documents show that some members of the organization entered and established themselves in America by filing false immigration applications or by arranging with officials in their home countries to refuse to let them in, thus making it impossible for them to be deported from the United States.
They concealed their illicit income by using false names and shell companies, keeping several million dollars in chips from Las Vegas casinos, and moving money to Armenia through couriers or informal cash transfer methods.
Some disguised their sources of income by posing as employees of legitimate companies. For example, defendants Mirzoyan, Arthur Yepiskoposyan and Manuk Muradakhanyan posed as consultants to medical laboratories owned by defendant Jacob Poghosyan and laundered money through them.
According to prosecutors, members of the organization engaged in extortion. For example, on May 29, 2009, defendants Vahan Stepanyan, Terdzhanyan and their accomplices called a member of another criminal group, who owed Terdzhanyan money, to a “shootout” at a Russian restaurant in Brighton Beach. The latter pulled out a knife and threatened to gut the debtor.
The Passion of Thieves
Authorities emphasize the defendant Armen Ghazarian, whom they call a thief in law, and allege that the criminal group operated under his patronage. According to court documents, he was “a powerful organized crime figure in Russia and the former Soviet Union, emigrated to the United States from Azerbaijan around 1996, and resided in the United States as a so-called refugee despite his regular travels to Armenia and Azerbaijan….”
According to prosecutors, Ghazarian “takes advantage of his position as a thief in law to resolve criminal disputes in the United States, Armenia and other countries.” Members of the Mirzoyan-Terjanyan Organization have used his help when they have conflicts with other criminals in the U.S. and other countries.
For example, in December 2006, Ghazaryan traveled to New York to help a member of the group, Varoujan Amroyan. An international crook, represented by another thief in the law, was trying to collect a $200,000 debt from an acquaintance of Amroyan. Ghazaryan talked to the other thief and afterwards announced that the problem of the debt had been removed.
Kazarian demanded that Amroyan pay him $100,000 for this favor. Amroyan refused, citing lack of money. According to court documents, other members of the Mirzoyan-Terdzhanyan Organization “ostracized him for this.”
Moneylessness did not prevent Amroyan from buying a boat. In August of this year, Ghazaryan ordered organization member Alexander Avetisyan, also known as Vladimir Arushunyan, to take the watercraft from Amroyan.
Another of their accomplices annoyed Ghazaryan with his habit of calling him drunk. In the end, according to the case materials, the thief-in-law and Avetisyan threatened to rape and kill him.
As the prosecutor’s office notes, Ghazarian is the first thief-in-law prosecuted in the U.S. under the RICO statute punishing racketeering. Racketeering in the U.S. is defined as organized criminal activity over a long period of time.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/russian/international/2010/10/101014_armenian_usa_fraud