The owner of a bogus imaging center in California that billed Medicare for $20 million in prescriptions for antipsychotic medications -- but never performed a single medical imaging exam -- received eight years in prison from a federal judge on August 18.
Lianna "Lili" Ovsepian received the sentence from U.S. District Court Judge James Otero after pleading guilty in November 2013 to charges of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and conspiracy to commit identity theft. She was also ordered to pay $9.1 million in restitution to Medicare and Medi-Cal.
Federal authorities say Ovsepian was the manager and owner of Manor Medical Imaging, which was registered as an independent diagnostic testing facility (IDTF) in Glendale, CA. While Manor did have some imaging equipment onsite, the entire operation was a sham, no imaging exams were ever performed, and no radiologists were affiliated with the IDTF.
Instead, Manor's operators "generated thousands of fraudulent prescriptions for unneeded and expensive antipsychotic medications" for patients who were typically low-income recipients of government-funded healthcare programs and who didn't need the drugs, according to a press release issued by the U.S. attorney's office. The scheme was in operation from September 2009 through October 2011, when it was shut down by authorities.
The prescriptions appeared to be issued by Dr. Kenneth Johnson, who signed in advance thousands of blank prescriptions that were filled out by Ovsepian's mother-in-law, Nuritsa Grigoryan. Johnson was a co-conspirator in the scheme, the government said. Johnson, Grigoryan, and a third co-conspirator were found guilty last year of a number of charges related to the scheme and are awaiting sentencing.
When the beneficiaries received the drugs from pharmacies, they returned to Manor and were given payments of approximately $100. The drugs were then diverted to the black market, where they were sold to other pharmacies and rebilled to healthcare programs as if they were being dispensed for the first time.
Federal authorities became suspicious of the scheme due to the volume of antipsychotic medications being prescribed at the IDTF, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office. Manor's operators were also prescribing noncontrolled drugs such as Advair and Singulair to make the operation seem legitimate.
Prosecutors charged that Manor issued more than 14,000 prescriptions, billing Medicare and Medi-Cal for more than $20 million, of which $9.1 million was paid to pharmacies. The case is one of the largest of its kind in Southern California involving fraud targeting the Medicare Part D program, the government claimed.
