The U.S. Department of Justice said the owner and operator of a Los Angeles pharmacy was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday for his role in a fraud scheme involving the Medicare Part D prescription drug program.
Rouzbeh Javaherian of Beverly Grove, California, who pleaded guilty to health care fraud on March 16, also was ordered to pay $644,060 - the amount of overpayments from Medicare as the result of the scheme - in restitution to Medicare by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California.
Javaherian was a licensed pharmacist and owner of Emoonah, Inc., which did business as Westaid Pharmacy and Medical Supply in Los Angeles. Javaherian planned and carried-out a scheme to defraud the Medicare Part D program by paying illegal cash kickbacks to Medicare beneficiaries to persuade them to submit their prescriptions to Westaid, according to admissions in the plea agreement.
Javaherian filled some of those prescriptions and also submitted false and fraudulent claims to Medicare Part D plan sponsors for prescriptions that he did not actually fill.
The case was investigated by the FBI and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California.
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