Two Glendale men have each been sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay $12.8 million in restitution for fraudulently using a pair of hospice companies to obtain Medicare payments and COVID-19 relief funds.
Gayk Akhsharumov, 40, manager and owner of San Gabriel Hospice and Palliative Care Inc. in Burbank and Broadway Hospice Inc. in Glendale, was ordered to repay $9.1 million at a sentencing hearing Thursday, March 28.
Karen “Kevin” Sarkisyan, 45, who was Akhsharumov’s biller and consultant, will be required to repay $3.6 million.
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.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the FBI investigated the case
From January 2018 through May 2021, Akhsharumov and Sarkisyan conspired to use San Gabriel Hospice and Broadway Hospice to submit about $9 million in fraudulent Medicare claims, according to prosecutors.
Akhsharumov concealed ownership and control over the two companies from Medicare, paid cash kickbacks to patient recruiters, and profited from the scheme.
In April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Akhsharumov submitted fraudulent applications for federal Economic Injury Disaster and Paycheck Protection Program loans and received $50,000 for San Gabriel Hospice, which had ceased operations.
He also stole about $91,483 deposited into San Gabriel Hospice’s bank account through the federal Provider Relief Fund program for eligible health care providers
Prosecutors said Sarkisyan filed false and fraudulent Medicare enrollment forms for San Gabriel Hospice that netted $3.6 million.
“Sarkisyan and Akhsharumov well knew the alleged hospice services were not medically necessary, and often not even rendered, and the referrals for those services had been procured through the payment of illegal kickbacks,” prosecutors said in their criminal complaint.