A former employee of a Southern California ambulance company pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud charges, admitting to submitting false claims for medically unnecessary transportation services.
Aharon Aron Krkasharyan, 53, of Los Angeles, California, pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud on April 25, 2017.
According to admissions made in connection with his plea, between June 2011 and April 2012, Krkasharyan conspired with other Mauran employees to submit claims to Medicare for ambulance transportation services for individuals who did not need such services. Krkasharyan also admitted that he and his co-conspirators instructed Mauran emergency medical technicians to conceal the patients’ true medical conditions by altering paperwork and creating fraudulent reasons to justify the ambulance services.
Krkasharyan was employed as the Quality Improvement Coordinator for Mauran Ambulance Inc., an ambulance transportation company operating in the greater Los Angeles area that provided non-emergency services to Medicare beneficiaries, many of whom were dialysis patients.
U.S. District Judge George H. Wu of the Central District of California accepted the guilty plea. Krkasharyan is scheduled to be sentenced on March 29, 2018.
The case was investigated by the FBI and HHS-OIG, and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Trial Attorneys Alexis D. Gregorian and Jeremy R. Sanders of the Fraud Section are prosecuting the case. The Fraud Section leads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force. Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country, has charged nearly 3,500 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $12.5 billion.
Key Facts
- State: California
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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