Reputed Mafia Godfather, Armen Kazarian, Alleged to Have Led Massive Medicare Cheating Scam

A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere charged 73 people. Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, but there also were arrests in New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio.

The scheme's scope and sophistication "puts the traditional Mafia to shame," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a Manhattan news conference. "They ran a veritable fraud franchise."

Unlike other cases involving crooked medical clinics bribing people to sign up for unneeded treatments, the operation was "completely notional," Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York office, said in a statement. "The whole doctor-patient interaction was a mirage."

The operation was under the protection of an Armenian crime boss, known in the former Soviet Union as a "vor," prosecutors said. The reputed boss, Armen Kazarian, was in custody in Los Angeles.

Bharara said it was the first time a vor — "the rough equivalent of a traditional godfather" — had been charged in a U.S. racketeering case.

Kazarian, 46, of Glendale, Calif., and two alleged ringleaders — Davit Mirzoyan, 34, also of Glendale, and Robert Terdjanian, 35, of Brooklyn — were named in an indictment charging racketeering conspiracy, bank fraud, money laundering and identity theft.

The indictment accused Terdjanian and others of hatching other schemes involving stolen credit cards, untaxed cigarettes and counterfeit Viagra. It also alleges that during a meeting last year at a Brighton Beach restaurant, Terdjanian pulled a knife on someone who owed him money "and threatened to disembowel the individual if the debt was not paid."

A judge jailed Terdjanian without bail on Wednesday at a brief hearing. Afterward, his attorney said his client denies the charges.

Kazarian and Mirzoyan were scheduled to appear in court Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Authorities began the New York-based investigation after information on 2,900 Medicare patients in upstate New York — including Social Security numbers and dates of birth — were reported stolen.

The defendants in the New York case also had stolen the identities of doctors and set up 118 phantom clinics in 25 states, authorities said. The names were used to submit fake bills for care that was never given, they said.

Some of the phony paperwork was a giveaway: It showed eye doctors doing bladder tests; ear, nose and throat specialists performing pregnancy ultrasounds; obstetricians testing for skin allergies; and dermatologists billing for heart exams.

In the New York portion of the case, more $100 million in fraudulent bills were submitted and Medicare paid out at least $35 million, sometimes by wiring it to the clinics' banks accounts, investigators said.

Most of the defendants "were Armenian nationals or immigrants and many maintained substantial ties to Armenia" and criminals there, the indictment said. Couriers would often carry cash proceeds from the fraud back to Armenia, it added.

Prosecutors were seeking forfeiture of real estate in Las Vegas; Palm Springs, Calif.; and elsewhere, and of a 2007 Maserati and a 2006 Jaguar.

Thanks to Tom Hays

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Mafia Princess Challenges Coco Giancana to Take a DNA Test to Prove She's Granddaughter of Sam Giancana

The daughter of assassinated Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana is challenging a Las Vegas woman to take a DNA test to prove she's Giancana's granddaughter.

Antoinette "Mafia Princess" Giancana, one of the mobster's three daughters, said she does not believe the claim by Coco Giancana, who identified herself as a granddaughter during a Tony Curtis-related interview last week with Vegas Confidential.

"This has really been upsetting to me and my sisters," said Antoinette Giancana, who moved from Chicago to Las Vegas about 14 months ago to be involved in the Las Vegas Mob Experience at the Tropicana . She added, "We don't know her or of her. I'd like to have a DNA test done. I just don't believe it."

Coco Giancana, who operates a local concierge service, said, "I don't have to prove anything to anybody. If she doesn't like it, that's tough."

According to Coco Giancana, Sam Giancana had an affair with a woman from Oak Park, Ill., who was a film star. "They had a baby. That was my mother."

The mobster visited the family home more than 100 times, said Coco Giancana. "I know where my mother came from and I know who came to our house and I know where the checks came from."

Coco Giancana moved here about 20 years ago, she said, after a career as a top model in New York City for Wilhelmina modeling agency. She grew up across from Jilly Rizzo's joint in New York and was befriended by Rizzo and Sam Giancana's friend Frank Sinatra, "who would take us backstage when I was 16."

Sam Giancana was killed at his Chicago home in 1975 in what appeared to be a mob hit. He was 67.

"There are so many people who claim they are related to us," said Antoinette Giancana.

Coco Giancana said she kept her grandfather's name "because I'm proud of it." She added that she's never taken a DNA test to confirm her link to the organized crime chief.

Her father, whom she did not identify, was a partner with Arnie Morton, who founded Morton's steak restaurants empire. She wasn't shy about filling in the blanks in her biography. During her modeling days, she said she dated the Cincinnati Reds' Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench over a 10-year period starting in the 1970s.

Thanks to Norm!

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"To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia" Motivation for 2 Movies on Irish Gangster Danny Greene

Embezzlement, racketeering, mob enforcer, suspected killer … it’s no wonder Irish-American mobster Danny Greene was blown to bits by a car bomb on Oct. 6, 1977. But with gangsters from Chicago to New York making headlines for decades, the vast criminal enterprises in Ohio, in which Greene was instrumental until his death, have garnered few national headlines over the years.

As a student at Ohio State University, Manhattan Beach resident Tommy Reid, who grew up in north New Jersey, had heard stories about the nearly mythic figure of Greene from his friend who grew up in Cleveland. Back in 1995, when the Internet wasn’t a dominant source for research, Reid found little information about Greene. After he graduated and moved to L.A., he heard Greene was going to be a subject of a book. He hunted down its author, Rick Porrello, and eventually optioned the book, “To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia,” in 1997.

After a long and winding road, two films that Reid produced about Greene will be released early next year. One is a documentary, “Danny Greene: The Rise and Fall of the Irishman,” and the other a feature film, “Kill the Irishman,” starring Ray Stevenson (HBO’s “Rome”), Christopher Walken, Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Paul Sorvino and Linda Cardellini. Anchor Bay, a division of Starz Media, is planning to release the film in North America, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand in early 2011.

While struggling to come up with funds for the feature film for 10 years, Reid said he became so specialized in his life history during his research that he tackled the documentary. He already had a screenplay that he had hired a writer (Jeremy Walters) to adapt the book into a feature, but the documentary seemed the best option in the hopes of bringing to light his aspirations in making a feature film.

“I had over 18 hours of interviews from all of these prominent figures that have had relationships with Danny Greene, his wife, a cop who went against him, the attorney who represented the mafia, a hitman who went after him, I had access to all of these guys and they were aging. Even since I made the documentary, a couple of the people have already passed away from natural causes. So Danny Greene was becoming an urban legend will in Cleveland.”

But the script began circulating and “got to the top shelf of Hollywood.” A “bankable” director, lead and supporting cast were attracted and Reid partnered with Code Entertainment. “Kill the Irishman” was filmed last year in Detroit, doubling for Cleveland, in an effort to get 40 percent in tax incentives.

Reid was still shooting his documentary when “Kill the Irishman” started filming in Detroit last year. The main challenge was raising money for post-production in order to get the highest quality facility to reach his vision. By putting production costs on a credit card and with the help of family money and a couple of private investors, one being Hermosa Beach resident William Fletcher, that project was finished. He said there are three different perspectives in the documentary - the Irish, Italian and the government side of the story. The other challenge was creating a compelling narrative so audiences would sit through an hour documentary on the life of a little-known figure. But Reid feels that Greene’s life story is compelling enough for two films.

According to Reid, “Kill the Irishman” chronicles the rise and fall of Greene, who muscled in on the Italian mob in 1970s Cleveland and set off a turf war that ravaged the streets of Cleveland and led to the collapse of the Mafia in a number of U.S. cities, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit and Los Angeles.

Greene, a former Marine, rose to prominence in the early 1960s in the International Longshoreman’s Association. Kicked out for embezzling union funds, he soon became a henchman for mobsters like Alex “Shondor” Birns, who had his own rap sheet of extortion, murder and more. After a money dispute, Birns reportedly put a hit on Greene and had a bomb planted in his car, but he discovered it before it took his life. Soon after, Greene, who survived numerous assassination attempts, was suspected of planting a bomb in Birns’ car, killing him. A few years later, Teamster official John Nardi, an associate of Greene’s, was blown up, followed a few months later by Greene, after a dentist appointment in Lyndhurst, Ohio. The Cleveland Mafia, who had conflicts for many years with Greene, was reportedly responsible for the deaths.

“When you hear something about Ohio and Cleveland … why would they have the mafia there?” Reid said. “You find out that Cleveland is such a big hub for the boats coming out of the Great Lakes, down through the distribution centers of the Mississippi and all the way through all the other distribution and out to the west from Ohio … there’s lot of cargo coming off these big ships.”

Reid added, “It’s not just Cleveland. It’s Youngstown, Toledo, which leads you into Detroit. Those four cities, that’s a wide area of mafia. That’s equivalent of what you would think of the New York crime families, all the families that had their hands into organized crime. Cleveland was an area that never really got as much exposure as the eastern cities did, Boston and New York.”

With his vast criminal past, Reid said one thing he was surprised about when it came to the contradictory life of Greene was this almost Robin Hood-type figure and how much he “would extract just to give back.”

“He would take the money he would make ... and he would give it out to his neighborhood,” Reid said. “He would pay for kid’s braces that needed dental work. He would buy groceries for struggling families that couldn’t put food on the table.”

Thanks to Michael Hixon

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Chicago Drug Fugitives Arrested in Mexico

Two former Chicago residents with ties to a sophisticated drug operation who had been on the run from law enforcement for nearly a decade, were located and arrested earlier this week in Mexico, announced Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Jody P. Weis, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

JUAN CARLOS DURAN, age 34, who is also known as “Psycho” and his common law wife, DIONNE GARCIA, age 33, both of whom were last known to reside at 2955 West 40th Street in Chicago, were arrested without incident on Tuesday, October 5th, near Tijuana, Mexico, by members of the Policia Estatal Preventiva (PEP), an international liaison and enforcement unit.

DURAN and GARCIA have been the subjects of an international manhunt, coordinated by the Chicago FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs (JTFG), since late 2001 when both were charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago with violation of Federal drug laws. DURAN was charged with possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute (PCP) and conspiracy while GARCIA was charged with conspiracy.

DURAN and GARCIA were among 52 people charged in connection with an investigation code named “Operation Blue Water”, which targeted a Chicago based street gang that manufactured and distributed PCP in Chicago and northwest Indiana. DURAN eluded arrest at the time the charges were filed while GARCIA fled after being released on bond following her arrest.

The arrest of DURAN and GARCIA was the result of a tip provided by a viewer of the television show “America’s Most Wanted” who saw DURAN and GARCIA featured during a recent episode. Further investigation by the Chicago JTFG, with the assistance of FBI Agents assigned to the Resolution Six initiative in Tijuana and Mexican authorities, ultimately resulted in the location of DURAN and GARCIA and their subsequent arrest.

DURAN and GARCIA were turned over to FBI Agents in San Diego, late yesterday. They are scheduled to have their initial court appearance later this afternoon, prior to their eventual return to Chicago to face the outstanding charges.

The Chicago FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs is comprised of FBI Special Agents and Gang Crimes Officers from the Chicago Police Department.

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Angelo "The Hook" LaPietra's Family Receives Discounted Chicago Water Bill

City meter readers always seemed to have a hard time getting inside the Bridgeport home of the late Chicago mob boss Angelo "The Hook" LaPietra to read his water meter.

So City Hall repeatedly sent estimated water bills to the 6,000-square-foot home, where LaPietra's daughter, JoAnne Lascola, lives.

City workers finally got inside on Aug. 26, 2009, to install a new meter -- one that can be read electronically by a meter reader driving past the house.

In removing the old meter, though, they found they had been drastically underestimating how much water LaPietra's family was using.

So, on Oct. 10, 2009, the city sent the family a bill for $1,156.66 -- $625.22 of that for about 355,000 gallons of water and $531.44 for sewer service.

The family balked. Three weeks later, the city slashed the bill to $256.55.

"In implementing the [automatic meter-reading] program, we found some readings from old meters came under question by customers, especially when they had not been read over a period of time," City Hall said in response to questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. "In these cases, customers were given the benefit of the doubt and charged on the basis of an average of previous bills."

In the LaPietra family's case, "A one-time adjustment of $900.11 was made to the account . . . because the customer had been estimated for a period of time, as a result of our inability to access the meter to obtain a meter reading."

Authorities say LaPietra, a brutal Chicago Outfit boss who died in 1999, ran the mob's 26th Street Crew, overseeing gambling in the Loop and Chinatown. He was once convicted of skimming millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos.

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