Amalya Cherniavsky, Medicare Fraud, California 2015

A Long Beach woman and her husband were sentenced today for their roles in a $1.5 million Medicare fraud scheme.

Amalya Cherniavsky, 41, and her husband, Vladislav Tcherniavsky, 46, both of Long Beach, were ordered to pay $614,418 in restitution.

U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. of the Central District of California ordered Tcherniavsky to serve 51 months in prison.

The charges against Amalya Cherniavsky and Vladislav Tcherniavsky include one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and five counts of health care fraud.

The evidence at trial demonstrated that Cherniavsky owned JC Medical Supply, a purported durable medical equipment supply company that she co-operated with Tcherniavsky.

Evidence further showed that the defendants paid illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters in exchange for patient referrals and paid kickbacks to physicians for fraudulent prescriptions—primarily for expensive, medically unnecessary power wheelchairs—which the defendants then used to support fraudulent bills to Medicare.

Between 2006 and 2013, the defendants submitted $1,520,727 in claims to Medicare and received $783,756 in reimbursement for those claims, according to evidence presented at trial.

The case 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 of the Central District of California.

Attorneys Blanca Quintero and Kevin R. Gingras of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section prosecuted the case.

Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country, has charged more than 2,300 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $7 billion.

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