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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A Burbank man who allegedly evaded the payment of nearly $5.8 million in federal taxes over several years by using a shill to illegally collect Medicare reimbursement payments made to his blood-testing company was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury.
Armen Muradyan, 58, is charged in downtown Los Angeles with one count of tax evasion.
He has been in federal custody since his April 9 arrest at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Muradyan, a dual citizen of the United States and Armenia, was arrested prior to boarding a one-way flight whose ultimate destination was Armenia. Muradyan's arraignment is scheduled for April 29 in Los Angeles federal court.
According to court documents, Muradyan owned and operated a Burbank- based blood testing laboratory called Genex Laboratories Inc. Medicare and bank records show that Medicare paid millions of dollars in reimbursements to Genex for blood testing. The reimbursements were wired to bank accounts in the name of an individual identified in court documents by the initials L.S., Muradyan's long-time friend to whom Muradyan had offered to pay $2,000 per month to pretend to be Genex's owner.
Muradyan allegedly told L.S. that he needed him to submit Medicare enrollment papers to Medicare on Genex's behalf because Medicare had banned Muradyan from submitting claims, prosecutors said.
L.S. and Muradyan allegedly opened bank accounts for Genex in L.S.'s name, but which Muradyan controlled. L.S. neither owned nor operated Genex and visited the company's Burbank office to collect his $2,000 monthly payment and to sometimes sign documents at Muradyan's direction, according to the indictment.
For the tax years of 2015 through 2020, Muradyan allegedly instructed L.S. to report Genex's financial activity on L.S.'s personal income tax returns using documents that L.S. provided to his own tax preparer. The documents purportedly showed that Genex had minimal net profit or was operating at a loss, meaning the company had little or no income tax liability.
For the same period, Muradyan allegedly submitted income tax returns that reported none of Genex's financial activity as his own and that he averaged an income of $40,000 per year. In fact, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Muradyan personally received and used millions of dollars in Medicare reimbursements to support his own expensive lifestyle.
For these tax years, Muradyan's unreported income was about $16.2 million, resulting in a total federal income tax due and owing by him of nearly $5.8 million, according to court documents.