An Armenian national, was sentenced last Friday to 41 months in prison by Chief United States District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood in Brunswick for his role in a conspiracy to defraud Medicare through phony medical businesses in Savannah, Georgia.
Khoren Gasparian, 30, who at the time of these offenses was in the United States on an expired Visa from Armenia, earlier pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to defraud Medicare.
In addition to his custody sentence – for which there is no parole –
Gasparian ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $182,735, and to serve 3 years of supervised release upon completion of his prison sentence. At the time of his guilty plea in Georgia, Gasparian was serving a prison sentence based on his guilty plea to a health care fraud offense in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. After Gasparian finishes serving his prison sentences, he will face immigration proceedings that will likely result in his deportation to Armenia.
According to the evidence presented at his guilty plea and sentencing hearings, between 2008 through 2010, Gasparian and others opened medical equipment companies in Savannah known as Healthy Family, SOJ Group and Savana Medical. Once opened, he and his cohorts stole the identities of hundreds of Medicare beneficiaries; stole the identities of dozens of doctors; and, used this stolen information to submit hundreds of thousands of dollars in phony claims to Medicare for health care services that were never provided.
Gasparian and others used the stolen identities of doctors and patients from multiple different states, including Alaska, California, New York, and Ohio, and even submitted claims for people that were dead at the time they were alleged to have been provided medical equipment.
Gasparian , was also connected with at least two other phony health care businesses located in California and New Mexico. He was responsible for approximately $1 million worth of fraudulent claims submitted to Medicare.