A Burbank man has pleaded not guilty to allegedly evading payment of nearly $5.8 million in federal taxes over several years by using a shill to collect Medicare reimbursement payments made to his blood-testing company illegally.
Armen Muradyan, 58, was charged on Monday, April 29, with one count of tax evasion in the United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles. The trial was tentatively set for June 18.
Muradyan, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, has been in federal custody since his April 9 arrest at Los Angeles International Airport on the criminal complaint. A dual citizen of the United States and Armenia, Muradyan was arrested prior to boarding a one-way flight whose ultimate destination was Armenia.
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 as “L.S.” – Muradyan’s longtime friend to whom Muradyan had offered to pay $2,000 monthly to pretend to be Genex’s owner.
Muradyan allegedly told L.S. he needed him to submit Medicare enrollment papers to Medicare on Genex’s behalf because Medicare had banned Muradyan from submitting claims.
L.S. and Muradyan allegedly opened bank accounts for Genex in L.S.’s name, which Muradyan controlled. L.S. neither owned nor operated Genex and only visited the company’s Burbank office to collect his $2,000 monthly payment and to sometimes sign documents at Muradyan’s direction.
For the tax years of 2015 through 2020, according to court documents, 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 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. Muradyan allegedly personally received and used millions of dollars in Medicare reimbursements to support his expensive lifestyle, the documents stated.
For these tax years, Muradyan’s unreported income was approximately $16,231,046, resulting in a total federal income tax due and owing by him of approximately $5,771,567, according to court documents.