LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A San Fernando Valley man who once said that the corrupt doctors he bribed in a pills-for-profit scheme were “like underwear to me'' was sentenced today to nine years in federal prison.
Minas “Maserati Mike'' Matosyan, 40, of Encino, pleaded guilty in April 2019 to a single federal count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
His younger brother, Hayk, of Granada Hills, was sentenced last October to 12 months of home detention after pleading guilty to the conspiracy charge.
The elder Matosyan ran the operation by hiring corrupt doctors who allowed conspirators to issue bogus prescriptions under their names in exchange for kickbacks. His sibling acted as a courier, helping deliver fraudulent prescriptions and bulk quantities of narcotic pills.
Members of the conspiracy profited from illicit prescriptions that were issued without any legitimate medical purpose through a series of clinics that periodically opened and closed in a “nomadic'' style, according to an indictment returned in the summer of 2017 against the Matosyans and about a dozen others.
Matosyan also admitted in the plea agreement that he conspired with others, including a lawyer, Fred Minassian, to obstruct justice, by providing falsifying medical records to police to thwart an investigation into the seizure of a load of Vicodin from one of the conspiracy's major customers.
The case so far has resulted in 11 convictions. Minassian, 53, of Glendale, is scheduled to go on trial on July 7.
The phony prescriptions allowed the conspirators to obtain bulk quantities of prescription drugs that were sold on the street, according to prosecutors.
The indictment describes how the elder Matosyan would “rent out recruited doctors to sham clinics,'' supplying corrupt doctors in exchange for kickbacks derived from proceeds generated when the other sham clinics created phony prescriptions or submitted bogus bills to health care programs.
In one example described in court documents, Minas Matosyan arranged for a corrupt doctor to work with a clinic owner in exchange for $120,000. When the clinic failed to pay the money and suggested instead that Matosyan “take back'' the doctor, Matosyan demanded his money and said, “Doctors are like underwear to me. I don't take back used things.''
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