Fraudster faces 3 years in prison for role in $14M imaging-related scheme
A California woman is facing three years in federal prison for bilking Medicare of over $14 million via imaging and other sham healthcare services.
Sophia Shaklian, 38, of Los Angeles, has been sentenced to serve a total of 35 months in jail, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday. Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. also ordered her to pay $14,103,043 in restitution following her guilty plea to one count of healthcare fraud last November.
Shaklian, who went by various aliases, and her accomplices used multiple “bogus” diagnostic imaging and hospice providers to submit fraudulent claims on behalf of the companies she owned. They perpetrated the scheme between March 2019 and August 2024, with imaging services often either unnecessary or never provided at all.
Businesses included the Pasadena-based Chateau d’Lumina Hospice and Palliative Care, owned by Shaklian, and several diagnostic testing companies. Imaging centers went by names such as Saint Gorge Radiology in Sylmar, Los Angeles; Hope Diagnostics in North Hollywood, Los Angeles; Direct Imaging & Diagnostics and Lab One, both based in Hollywood, Los Angeles; and Labtech and Lifescan Diagnostics in Claremont, California.
Shaklian and accomplices would use insurance information from Medicare beneficiaries to “knowingly and willfully submit fraudulent claims” on behalf of them, authorities charged. Often, these individuals did not need these services, never received them, and were unfamiliar with the fraudulent medical imaging providers. In one instance, Shaklian and colleagues “willfully submitted” a false claim for $2,000 in November 2022 for diagnostic testing they claimed was delivered to an individual who never received it.
“Shaklian admitted in her plea agreement that fraudulent claims were submitted on behalf of the sham providers, some by herself and others by her co-schemers during and in furtherance of the above scheme,” authorities said in an announcement.
Co-conspirator Alex Alexsanian, 48, of Burbank, California, also pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. Sentencing is scheduled for April 28, with Alexsanian facing up to 20 years in federal prison, authorities said Tuesday.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.