The former owner and operator of three Los Angeles medical clinics was sentenced Monday to 6 1/2 years in federal prison for his role in a scheme in which more than $4.5 million in fraudulent claims were submitted to Medicare.
Hovik Simitian, 48, of Los Angeles, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell to pay about $1.6 million in restitution to Medicare, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Simitian and a co-defendant were each charged in 2014 with the conspiracy count, plus six counts of health care fraud and one count of conspiracy to pay health care kickbacks.
Simitian and Anahit Shatvoryan, 50, of Glendale, managed and operated three medical clinics — Columbia Medical Group Inc., Life Care Medical Clinic and Safe Health Medical Clinic — out of two suites in the same Los Angeles office building.
From February 2010 through June 2014, the defendants paid marketers illegal kickbacks to recruit Medicare beneficiaries to the clinics, according to an indictment filed in Los Angeles. They then submitted false claims to Medicare for services — including procedures such as bowel function and nerve conduction tests — that were not medically necessary and never actually provided, prosecutors said.
During that time, the clinics submitted more than $4 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, and Medicare paid about $1.6 million on those claims, according to the government.
Shatvoryan pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge and was sentenced last month to four years and three months behind bars.
—City News Service