California hospice operater sentenced to 12 years in prison for medicare fraud

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs reported on May 6, 2025 that Petros Fichidzhyan, 44, of Granada Hills, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in a hospice 17 million dollar medicare fraud.

The Department of Justice Press Release stated:

According to court documents, Petros Fichidzhyan, 44, of Granada Hills, schemed with others to bill Medicare for hospice services that were not medically necessary and never provided. Fichidzhyan and his co-schemers controlled hospice entities and used foreign nationals’ personal identifying information (PII) to conceal the scheme, using the PII to, among other things, open bank accounts, submit information to Medicare, and sign property leases. The defendant and his co-schemers also misappropriated the names and PII of several doctors, two of whom were deceased, to fraudulently bill Medicare for purported hospice services. Medicare paid the sham hospices nearly $16 million, of which Fichidzhyan received nearly $7 million, with more than $5.3 million laundered through a dozen shell and third-party bank accounts. Fichidzhyan also obtained more than $1 million in false claims paid to his home health care agency, which fraudulently used a doctor’s name and identifying information as having certified Medicare beneficiaries for home health care. When the doctor confronted Fichidzhyan about the fraud, Fichidzhyan attempted to cover up the scheme by paying the doctor $11,000.

This article is not to attack genuine hospice care, but rather to emphasize that California legalized assisted suicide in 2016 and people are dying by assisted suicide, sometimes based on a lack of available hospice services. Medicare fraud not only steals from the government healthcare system but rather it also effects the funding and trust of genuine hospice care services.

The Department of Justice Press Release further stated that:

“For years, the defendant, working with others, ran multiple sham hospice and home health care schemes, fraudulently billing Medicare over $17 million,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The defendant’s egregious scheme relied on layers of deception and sophisticated money laundering, and wasted millions in taxpayer money. With the help of our law enforcement partners, the Department of Justice is fully committed to stopping these criminal networks and protecting the public fisc.”

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports genuine hospice care that enables people to live with true caring and compassion until their natural death.