Article 0 Comments Claims adjuster, Agop Sarafian, 65, of La Crescenta, Calif., and chiropractic practitioner, Shahe Topjian, D.C. 65, of Granada Hills, Calif., were apprehended on felony insurance fraud charges after presumably conspiring to defraud Sarafian's employer, the State Compensation Insurance Fund, by setting up phony employees' compensation lien payments to receive unjust insurance payouts of over $1.6 million.
A lien is often submitted by a physician or supplier for payment that they think they are entitled from a plaintiff's workers' payment treatment or for services rendered.
In November 2019, another State Fund worker supposedly kept in mind a suspicious lien payment released by Sarafian and recommended an unique detective for State Fund of their issues. State Fund initiated an investigation and supposedly found that Sarafian had processed 459 lien payments to Topjian over a period of 12 years. S
State Fund referred the case to the California Department of Insurance. The CDI's investigation, called Operation Lien on Me, discovered Sarafian produced and authorized 459 lien payments for Topjian in between 2007 and 2019. Sarafian and Topjian presumably conspired in this organized scams scheme to repeatedly defraud State Fund by setting up fake employees' comp lien payments for services that were never ever offered. Sarafian supposedly utilized info from previous State Fund employees' compensation claims he worked on to develop the fraudulent lien payments.
The deceptive lien payments contained no supporting documents that Topjian offered treatment or treatments to any of the 459 plaintiffs. Sarafian processed the lien payments under his $5,000 authorizing authority limit to prevent outdoors approval. The payments from State Fund were supposedly sent out to Topjian and a portion was given to Sarafian, though neither of them was entitled to get any of the payments. Their supposed scams resulted in a $1,603,340 loss to State Fund. Sarafian resigned from State Fund in December 2019.
Both Sarafian and Topjian were booked into the Los Angeles Sheriff Department Inmate Reception Center. Bail was set at $50,000. Their arraignment will be set up at Department 30 of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office is prosecuting this case.