A Los Angeles physician who assumed the role as co-owner of a Sacramento medical clinic has been sentenced to federal prison for his participation in a Medicare fraud scam.
Alexander Popov, 47, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Morrison C.England Jr. to eight years and one month in prison for committing health care fraud and conspiring to commit health care fraud, according to a federal Department of Justice news release. He was found guilty by a jury in July.
In sentencing, Judge England found that Popov was responsible for more than a million dollars in fraudulent billings submitted to Medicare and more than $600,000 in payments made on false claims.
Evidence at trial showed that Popov gave false testimony and manufactured evidence at trial, amounting to an obstruction of justice, officials said. Specifically cited was a letter Popov produced on the eve of the trial that was supposedly written years earlier while the conspiracy was in progress.
According to testimony during the trial, from February 2006 through August 2008, Vardges Egiazarian, 63, of Panorama City, owned and controlled three health care clinics in Sacramento, Richmond and Carmichael. Egiazarian and others recruited doctors to submit applications to Medicare for billing numbers. Popov assumed the role of co-owner and practitioner at the Sacramento clinic, and claims were submitted to Medicare under his name for medical services purportedly rendered at the clinic.
But officials said Popov never treated patients at the clinics. The patients, most of whom were elderly and did not speak English, were recruited and transported to the clinics by individuals who were paid according to the number of patients they brought to the clinics.
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