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Armenian Billion-Dollar Fraud Scheme Exposed in Los Angeles

30 January 2026 [16:33] - TODAY.AZ

by Ibrahim Aliyev

The recently uncovered fraud involving the Somali diaspora worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota prompted other U.S. states and their residents to launch their own local investigations to identify cases of misappropriation of American taxpayers’ money. As it turned out, the same well-tested scheme operates everywhere, and Armenians are allegedly involved in one of them.

The Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. Mehmet Oz, is the person who managed to uncover an Armenian fraud scheme in the very heart of California—Los Angeles—where, as is well known, there is a strong diaspora under the patronage of ANCA.

Walking through the streets of Van Nuys, Dr. Oz pointed out a striking fact: within a radius of four blocks there are as many as 42 hospices. A hospice is a medical facility that provides palliative care to seriously ill people in the terminal (final) stage of illness, aimed at ensuring maximum comfort at the end of life, pain relief, and psychological, social, and spiritual support for the patient and their family. Hospices do not treat the disease; they improve the quality of the remaining life.

“Either everyone here is dying en masse, or this is a proven fraud scheme that everyone wants to be part of,” Oz said.

All of these facilities are allegedly run by Armenians—there are signs in Cyrillic or Armenian. Inside, there is no one. No real patients or medical staff. Windows are often boarded up.

“These are not legitimate end-of-life palliative care providers. Fraudsters register fictitious hospice addresses and bill Medicare—the federal government health insurance program—for services that were never provided. Often this is done using patients who either do not exist at all or are not in a terminal stage of illness,” the Medicare administrator explains.

There is one exposed case in which $16 million was stolen from Medicare. The organizer received only two years in prison. Overall, according to Oz’s estimates, fraud in the hospice and home care sector in Los Angeles County alone reaches $3.5 billion.

Investigators believe the Armenian mafia scheme involves hundreds of recruited corrupt doctors who falsify terminal diagnoses, deceive or bribe patients to obtain their Medicare numbers, and enroll approximately 100,000 people into fictitious programs.

Dr. Oz’s investigation garnered millions of views on social media, and many commentators are calling what is happening “just the tip of the iceberg,” which, they say, eclipses even the recent scandals in Minnesota. 


However, the scheme is no different from what the Somalis allegedly did. There, as a reminder, a large-scale mechanism for stealing funds from federal child nutrition programs was uncovered. A key episode was the case of the nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future, through which applications were ??????? submitted to state structures and federal agencies for reimbursement of expenses for supposedly provided free meals to low-income children.

According to U.S. federal prosecutors, dozens of affiliated organizations systematically inflated the number of aid recipients, listed fictitious addresses of meal distribution sites, and reported thousands of children who in reality did not exist or were not actually provided with meals. The money was transferred from the federal budget, after which it was laundered through shell companies and spent on real estate, expensive cars, and luxury goods.

The total damage recorded in the indictments amounted to about $250 million. This is the exact figure that appears in court documents and asset forfeiture warrants.

Somalis, many of whom are illegal immigrants, denied everything, accusing the authorities of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and discrimination. As a result, officials who tried to stop the payments and verify documents faced problems that paralyzed oversight.

Nevertheless, as part of that case, charges were brought against more than 70 individuals—owners of fictitious catering companies, NGO leaders, accountants, and intermediaries, including representatives of the diaspora. Later, ICE agents were deployed to the state and began mass arrests of illegal immigrants.

The Armenian diaspora, however, is not lagging behind the Somali one. As soon as Dr. Oz’s investigation gained wide exposure, ANCA responded with the very same accusations against him—racism, hatred, and discrimination. Lobbyists are attacking Mehmet Oz’s activities, calling him a fraudster.

Given that the theft scheme and the line of justification fully replicate the Minnesota scenario, there is no doubt that this concerns systemic organized fraud. Attempts to shield it with accusations of “racism,” “hatred,” and “discrimination” are already a familiar tactic, previously used by the Somali diaspora and now being reproduced verbatim by Armenian lobbyists.

Practice shows that such outcries are used exclusively for one purpose—to delay the investigation or drive it into a dead end in order to buy time to clean up evidence. In Minnesota, this trick did not work. Let us hope it will not work in California either, even though it is a “blue state” filled with corrupt Democrats who have business ties with ANCA. It is no coincidence that Glendale is 78% Armenian.

Trump has already shown that theft of federal funds is a red line for him. And if the Somali case ended not with words but with handcuffs, then Armenian neighborhoods in Los Angeles are unlikely to remain outside the attention of federal authorities. Let the Armenian lobby now be nervous about this as well. ICE agents will seem to be everywhere to them.

URL: http://www.today.az/news/analytics/265207.html

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