A jury in the Central District of California convicted a California doctor in a $45 million scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting claims for Botox injections that were never provided and medically unnecessary, and for obstructing the investigation by manipulating and altering medical records to mislead criminal investigators.
The investigation began with a referral from the Health Care Fraud Section’s Data Analytics Team after its analysis showed the defendant received more Medicare payments for Botox injections than any other doctor in the United States.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Violetta Mailyan, 45, of Glendale, owned and operated Healthy Way Medical Centre, a clinic that purported to provide beauty and cosmetic services, a statement on Tuesday by the U.S. justice department said.
Although Medicare reimburses medical providers for Botox injections when necessary to treat documented cases of chronic migraines, Ms Mailyan billed and received payments for thousands of injections that were never provided, were provided only for cosmetic purposes, or were for patients whose primary care physicians had not referred them for migraine treatment.
For example, evidence at trial showed that Ms Mailyan billed for providing Botox injections while she was on vacation in Cabo, Mexico; Maui, Hawaii; Las Vegas; Pennsylvania; and New York; billed for purportedly injecting a Medicare beneficiary who was actually incarcerated in federal prison at the time; and billed for thousands of injections, representing over $19 million, purportedly provided on days when her clinic was closed.
The evidence also showed that Ms Mailyan backdated some claims to bill for injections purportedly provided before the patients even contacted Mailyan’s clinic to request an appointment, and fabricated patient medical records, including consent forms, to make it appear as if patients suffered from chronic migraines and received treatment for those migraines in her office.
In addition to the fraudulent billing, evidence at trial showed that Ms Mailyan actively sought to cover up her crimes as investigators closed in. After receiving a grand jury subpoena seeking medical records, Ms Mailyan altered patient records to make it appear as if she had provided Botox injections for chronic migraines when those services had not been provided, and gave the altered documents to federal agents.
The evidence at trial showed that Ms Mailyan used Medicare funds she obtained through the scheme to pay for her lavish vacations in Mexico, Hawaii, and elsewhere, and to purchase luxury collectible goods such as a $12,000 17th century crossbow and a $3,000 painting.
Following the conviction, the jury also found that a Tesla Model X, a Tesla Cybertruck, $251,124 in funds contained in multiple bank accounts, brokerage accounts valued at $7,312,037 at the time of seizure, and four properties in Surfside and Glendale, California with combined estimated equity of $7,343,636, were proceeds of the fraud subject to forfeiture.
Ms Mailyan was convicted Monday of nine counts of wire fraud and three counts of obstruction of a criminal investigation of a health care offense. She is scheduled to be sentenced on September 10, 2026. She faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud and five years in prison for each count of obstruction.
