A San Fernando man pleaded guilty on Monday, July 14 to his role in a scheme that defrauded Medicare of almost $16 million, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
The defendant, 33-year-old Valley Village resident Juan Carlos Esparza, was part of a group that operated four “sham” hospices and billed Medicare for hospice services that were medically unnecessary, and also never provided. He pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering in federal court.
The “sham” hospices were operated from 2019 to 2023, and Esparza owned one of the operations, House of Angels Hospice, while the other three hospices were controlled by co-defendants in the case, according to the DOJ. Though they operated the fake hospices, the co-defendants listed the names of foreign nationals as the owners, using those foreign nationals’ personal information to open back accounts, sign leases for property, use cell phones in their names and submit information to Medicare.
Esparza and other co-defendants, including Winnetka residents Karpis Srapyan and Susanna Harutyunyan, who both pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection to the hospice fraud on July 7, laundered the fraudulent proceeds, which amounted to nearly $16 million. Harutyunyan faces deportation. Srapyan and Harutyunyan are scheduled to be sentenced later this year.
Co-defendants also include Petros Fichidzhyan, who pleaded guilty to health care fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering and in May was sentenced to 12 years in prison and, Mihran Panosyan, who pleaded guilty to money laundering last month and is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 8.
The DOJ said Esparza and the co-defendants had fake identification documentation and other documents associated with the hospices at the House of Angels office, and bank documents, checkbooks, and credit and debit cards under the names of the foreign nationals they had listed as owners of the other hospices. As a part of the fraud, they would move around the proceeds to different accounts and assets, such as bank accounts listed under shell companies and Esparza used $90,000 of the fraudulently obtained money to buy a vehicle.
Esparza is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 6 and faces maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for healthcare fraud and a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for transactional money laundering, according to the DOJ.
“The guilty plea today is the most recent conviction in the Justice Department’s ongoing effort to combat hospice fraud in the greater Los Angeles area,” according to a DOJ statement. The agency referenced the conviction of an Arcadia doctor in a scheme to bill Medicare for unnecessary hospice services in August of last year, as well as the sentencing of two Glendale men for another hospice fraud scheme in March of last year as other examples of this effort.