California Man Sentenced to 12 Years for Defrauding Medicare of More Than $17 Million Through Sham Hospices
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on May 6, 2025, that Petros Fichidzhyan, 44, of Granada Hills, in Los Angeles County, California, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and three years of supervised release for his role in a years-long scheme to defraud Medicare of more than $17 million through sham hospice companies and his home health care company.
According to court documents, Fichidzhyan schemed with others to bill Medicare for hospice services that were not medically necessary and never provided. He and his co-schemers controlled hospice entities and used foreign nationals' personal identifying information to conceal the scheme, using it to open bank accounts, submit information to Medicare and sign property leases. They also misappropriated the names and identifying information of several doctors, two of whom were deceased, to fraudulently bill Medicare for purported hospice services.
Medicare paid the sham hospices nearly $16 million, of which Fichidzhyan received nearly $7 million, with more than $5.3 million laundered through a dozen shell and third-party bank accounts. His home health care agency separately obtained more than $1 million in false claims, fraudulently using a doctor's name and identifying information as having certified Medicare beneficiaries for home health care; when the doctor confronted him about the fraud, Fichidzhyan attempted to cover up the scheme by paying the doctor $11,000.
Fichidzhyan pleaded guilty in February 2025 to health care fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. At sentencing he was also ordered to pay $17,129,060 in restitution, and the court preliminarily ordered the forfeiture of a home bought with fraudulent proceeds; the government has seized $2,920,383 from bank accounts associated with the fraud. The Justice Department said the sentence was the most recent step in its ongoing effort to combat hospice fraud in the greater Los Angeles area.
"For years, the defendant, working with others, ran multiple sham hospice and home health care schemes, fraudulently billing Medicare over $17 million," said Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, calling the scheme one that "relied on layers of deception and sophisticated money laundering, and wasted millions in taxpayer money." Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, said Fichidzhyan "lined his pockets at the expense of the American taxpayer."
The FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General investigated the case, and Trial Attorneys Eric C. Schmale and Sarah E. Edwards of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section are prosecuting it. (Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于华盛顿的美国卫生与公众服务部总部休伯特·汉弗莱大楼（资料图）。本案由该部监察长办公室与联邦调查局共同调查。ajay_suresh 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Hubert H. Humphrey Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in Washington, D.C. (file photo). The department's Office of Inspector General investigated this case with the FBI. ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
