One of the rooms at The Karen Ann Quinlan Home for Hospice in Fredon, NJ.
Los Angeles, California – In a case that lays bare the vulnerabilities of the nation’s health care safety net, a Winnetka man pleaded guilty this week to laundering more than $4.6 million in proceeds from a sprawling scheme that defrauded Medicare of nearly $16 million through a network of sham hospice companies.
Mihran Panosyan, 46, admitted in federal court that he played a key role in concealing the origins of funds siphoned from the public health system — money that was meant to support end-of-life care for the terminally ill, but instead financed real estate purchases, private school tuition, and personal luxuries.
According to court documents, the scheme unfolded in three coordinated phases. First, Panosyan’s co-defendants used the stolen identities of foreign nationals who had left the country to create fake hospice companies. They opened bank accounts, obtained fraudulent IDs, and ran the entire operation under the guise of foreign ownership to avoid scrutiny.
Then came the fraud itself. The fake hospices submitted claims for patients who were neither terminally ill nor receiving care — many of whom were unaware they’d ever been listed as patients. Medicare paid out nearly $16 million based on these falsified records.
Panosyan’s role was to move the money. Authorities say he transferred the funds between multiple bank accounts tied to shell corporations and the bogus hospices, effectively washing the money and making it harder to trace. In the process, more than $4.6 million was laundered through a financial web that hid the scheme’s scope and enriched its participants.
Panosyan is now facing up to 20 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on September 8 by a federal judge who will weigh the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other legal factors in determining his punishment.
The case is part of a broader federal crackdown on hospice fraud in Southern California, where investigators have uncovered a growing black market in end-of-life billing. Panosyan’s co-defendant, Petros Fichidzhyan, was sentenced last month to 12 years in prison for related crimes. Three more defendants are set to stand trial in late July.
