Two owners and operators of a Los Angeles pharmacy were both sentenced to 144 months in prison for their roles in a healthcare fraud scheme where Medicare and CIGNA were billed more than $11.8 million in fraudulent claims for prescription drugs. Aleksandr Suris, 51, of Sherman Oaks, California, was sentenced to 144 months in prison and also ordered to pay restitution of $11,826,444.65 to Medicare and $17,109.39 to CIGNA. The court ordered Suris to make an immediate partial restitution payment of $500,000. Maxim Sverdlov, 45, also of Sherman Oaks, was sentenced to 144 months in prison and ordered to pay $11,826,444.65 in restitution to Medicare. The court ordered Sverdlov to make an immediate partial restitution payment of $500,000. Suris and Sverdlov were the co-owners and co-operators of Royal Care Pharmacy (Royal Care) in Hollywood. According to the evidence presented at trial, from 2012 to 2015, Suris and Sverdlov fraudulently billed Medicare and CIGNA for prescription medications that Royal Care did not actually purchase or dispense to beneficiaries. In order to hide the fraud, Suris and Sverdlov obtained fake drug invoices from co-conspirators to make it appear as if Royal Care had purchased the medicines for which it had billed Medicare and CIGNA, when it actually had not. Suris and Sverdlov also used these fake invoices to launder the proceeds of the fraud through a co-conspirator. In total, Suris and Sverdlov submitted more than $11.8 million in bogus claims to Medicare for prescription drugs that they never purchased or dispensed to patients.
