Mirzoyan-Terdjanian International Crime Syndicate Charged with $163 Million Medicare Scam WASHINGTON – Seventy-three defendants, including a number of alleged members and associates of an Armenian-American organized crime enterprise, were charged in indictments unsealed yesterday with various health care fraud-related crimes involving more than $163 million in fraudulent billing, according to a statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice. In this national, multi-agency investigation, 52 were arrested today by FBI agents in the largest Medicare fraud scheme ever perpetrated by a single criminal enterprise, the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian syndicate, and charged by the Department of Justice. The defendants are charged with engaging in numerous fraud activities, including highly-organized, multi-million dollar schemes to defraud Medicare and insurance companies by submitting fraudulent bills for medically unnecessary treatments or treatments that were never performed. According to the indictments, the defendants allegedly stole the identities of doctors and thousands of Medicare beneficiaries and operated at least 118 different phony clinics in 25 states for the purposes of submitting Medicare reimbursements. "The international organized crime enterprise known as the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian, fleeced the health care system through a wide-range of money making criminal fraud schemes.  The members and associates located throughout the United States and in Armenia, perpetrated a large-scale, nationwide Medicare scam that fraudulently billed Medicare for more than $100 million of unnecessary medical treatments using a series of phantom clinics," said Kevin Perkins, FBI Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigative Division.  "We want to restore the confidence in the nation’s health care system and assure practitioners we will not stand by and let their identities be used for criminal gain." "Today, special agents of the Office of Inspector General working in tight coordination with our federal law enforcement partners made 52 arrests across the nation—from New York to Los Angeles—on charges including Medicare fraud and medical identity theft totaling more than $163 million," said Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services. "Criminals stealing from Medicare needn’t look over their shoulders to know that we are in hot pursuit." According to the charges filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian Organization is named for its principal leaders, Davit Mirzoyan and Robert Terdjanian. The leadership of the organization is based in Los Angeles and New York, and its operations extend throughout the United States and internationally. Among the defendants charged with racketeering is Armen Kazarian, who is alleged to be a "Vor," a term translated as "Thief-in-Law" and refers to a member of a select group of high-level criminals from Russia and the countries that has been part of the former Soviet Union, including Armenia. This is the first time a Vor has ever been charged for a racketeering offense, and the first time since 1996 that a known Vor has been arrested on any federal charge.