The chief executive of a Glendale medical imaging company was found guilty Friday of fraudulently submitting claims worth more than $250 million through the state workers’ compensation system.
Sam Sarkis Solakyan was chief executive of Vital Imaging Inc. in Glendale and other imaging centers in California. According to prosecutors, he conspired with the head of a patient scheduling service to set up a scheme where doctors were paid bribes and kickbacks for referrals of workers’ comp patients for magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI scans.
The compensation offered to the corrupt doctors consisted of either cash or referrals of new patients in what is known as a “cross-referral” scheme. The scheme was perpetrated from no later than mid-2013 to November 2016, according to trial evidence.