LOS ANGELES — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - California, Central), published as received.

LOS ANGELES – A woman from the Larchmont area of Los Angeles was sentenced today to 35 months in federal prison for defrauding Medicare out of more than $14 million by submitting fraudulent claims for hospice care and diagnostic testing services that were either unnecessary or not provided at all.

Sophia Shaklian, 38, was sentenced by United States District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., who also ordered her to pay $14,103,043 in restitution. 

Shaklian pleaded guilty in November 2025 to one count of health care fraud.

From March 2019 to August 2024, Shaklian and her co-schemers – often using aliases – used multiple bogus hospice and diagnostic testing providers enrolled with Medicare and submitted fraudulent claims on behalf of companies she owned.

These businesses included a Shaklian-owned hospice company – the Pasadena-based Chateau d’Lumina Hospice and Palliative Care – and several diagnostic testing companies: Saint Gorge Radiology in Sylmar; Hope Diagnostics in North Hollywood; Direct Imaging & Diagnostics and Lab One – both based in Hollywood; and Labtech and Lifescan Diagnostics in Claremont.    

Shaklian and her co-schemers used the information of Medicare beneficiaries, and checked beneficiaries’ Medicare eligibility to knowingly and willfully submit fraudulent claims to Medicare on behalf of beneficiaries who did not need the services, had never received the services, and were not familiar with the fraudulent hospice and diagnostic testing providers, with the intent to defraud Medicare into reimbursing the sham providers for those claimed services.

For example, Shaklian and her co-schemers knowingly and willfully submitted a false and fraudulent claim for $2,000 in November 2022 to Medicare for diagnostic testing purportedly provided to an individual.

Shaklian admitted in her plea agreement that fraudulent claims were submitted on behalf of the sham providers, some by herself and others by her co-schemers during and in furtherance of the above scheme. Because Shaklian was involved in the billing and was familiar with the amounts Medicare paid to the fraudulent providers on the types of claims submitted during this scheme, she caused a loss of at least $14,103,043 to Medicare.

Co-defendant Alex Alexsanian, 48, a.k.a. “Samvel” and “Samo,” of Burbank, pleaded guilty on January 20 to one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. He will face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison at his April 28 sentencing hearing.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General and the FBI are investigating this matter.

Assistant United States Attorney Kevin B. Reidy of the Major Frauds Section is prosecuting this case.