U.S.-Armenia connection

"The international organized crime enterprise known as the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian, fleeced the healthcare system through a wide-range of money making criminal fraud schemes. The members and associates located throughout the United States and in Armenia, perpetrated a large-scale, nationwide Medicare scam that fraudulently billed Medicare for more than $100 million of unnecessary medical treatments using a series of phantom clinics," said the FBI's Perkins. "We want to restore the confidence in the nation's healthcare system and assure practitioners we will not stand by and let their identities be used for criminal gain." 

"Today, special agents of the Office of Inspector General working in tight coordination with our federal law enforcement partners made 52 arrests across the nation – from New York to Los Angeles – on charges including Medicare fraud and medical identity theft totaling more than $163 million," said HHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson. "Criminals stealing from Medicare needn't look over their shoulders to know that we are in hot pursuit."

According to the charges filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian Organization is named for its principal leaders, Davit Mirzoyan and Robert Terdjanian. The leadership of the organization is based in Los Angeles and New York, and its operations extend throughout the United States and internationally. Among the defendants charged with racketeering is Armen Kazarian, who is alleged to be a "Vor," a term translated as "Thief-in-Law" and refers to a member of a select group of high-level criminals from Russia and the countries that has been part of the former Soviet Union, including Armenia. This is the first time a Vor has ever been charged for a racketeering offense, and the first time since 1996 that a known Vor has been arrested on any federal charge.