CALIFORNIA – 40 year old San Fernando Valley resident, Minas Matosyan, a.k.a. “Maserati Mike,” was sentenced to 108 months in federal prison on Thursday, May 21 for leading a conspiracy to distribute powerful prescription opioids via sham medical clinics that hired corrupt doctors. The hired corrupt physicians wrote fraudulent prescriptions to black market customers.
The defendant was arrested in August 2017 on a federal grand jury indictment that charged him and 12 other defendants with scheming at least 2 million controlled prescription pills for sale on the black market. According to his plea agreement, Matosyan admitted that he and his co-conspirators stole the identities of doctors to issue prescriptions by personally acquiring prescription pads in the doctors’ names or by arranging for other co-conspirators to do so.
Matosyan staffed receptionists at the clinics who would falsely verify the phony prescriptions to pharmacists who called to check authenticity. The defendant also sold narcotic prescriptions to black market customers either directly or through couriers in bulk quantities of hydrocodone and oxycodone.
According to court documents, Matosyan offered a doctor a “very lucrative position” where the doctor would “sit home making $20,000 a month doing nothing,” as early on as May 2016. When the doctor declined the offer, Matosyan stole the doctor’s identity. The defendant sent a co-conspirator a text message containing the doctor’s full name, medical license number and national provider identifier number that the co-conspirator would use to move forward in ordering prescription pads in the doctor’s name.
Over the course of two months, Matosyan and his co-conspirators sold fraudulent prescriptions issued by the victim doctor for at least 9,450 pills of oxycodone and 990 pills of hydrocodone. The defendant also admitted in his plea agreement that he conspired with 53 year old Glendale lawyer, Fred Minassian, to falsify medical records. The Glendale lawyer provided the falsified records to police to prevent an investigation that would seize a load of Vicodin from one of the conspiracy’s major customers.
Minassian is scheduled to go on trial on July 7. It is unclear at this time if his office, The Law Offices of Fred G. Minassian, Inc., located at 101 N Brand Blvd in Glendale, California will be under investigation. The defendant was admitted to the State Bar of California on June 7, 1994. It is unclear at this time whether the defendants attorney license, #170974, will be investigated for further fraudulence.
This cases investigation has rendered 11 convictions. The investigation was conducted by:
- The Drug Enforcement Administration
- IRS Criminal Investigation
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Office of Inspector General
- The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office
- Pharmaceutical Crimes Unit
- Homeland Security Investigations
- Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
- Los Angeles Police Department
- the California Department of Justice
- Orange Police Department.
This matter was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney, Benjamin R. Barron, Chief of the Santa Ana Branch Office.
