California Man Found Guilty of Medicare DME Fraud Scheme

A federal jury found 36-year-old Glendale, Calif., durable medical equipment company owner Vahe Tahmasian guilty of defrauding Medicare to the tune of $1.5 million, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday.

The case was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, a 2009 initiative by DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services aimed at coordinating fraud prevention strategies and identifying trends.

Tahmasian was convicted March 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on 13 counts — one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and six counts each of aggravated identity theft and healthcare fraud. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison per count and a mandatory two-year sentence for each aggravated identity theft count, for a possible total of 82 years.

According to evidence presented at trial, between April 2009 and February 2011, Tahmasian and Eric Mkhitarian used Orthomed Appliance in West Hollywood as a cover, giving the company a false owner, stealing the identities of doctors and Medicare beneficiaries from patient files and filing large numbers of fraudulent Medicare claims for a wide array of products, many of which were back and ankle braces and ostomy pouches. Tahmasian alone submitted $1,584,640 worth of claims and received $994,036, prosecutors said, all the while using a fake California driver’s license.

Mkhitarian remains on the run, DOJ spokesman Peter Carr told Device Daily Bulletin. — Lena Freund

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