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The video shows Oz being driven around a section of Van Nuys where he says that about $3.5 billion worth of medicare fraud has been perpetrated by hospice and home care businesses, claiming that “it’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”
At one point in the video, which was posted Tuesday on the agency’s official social media accounts, Oz stands in front of a sign for an Armenian bakery and says, “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”
In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, Newsom called on the agency to investigate “Dr. Oz’s baseless and racist allegations against Armenian Americans in California.”
Movses Bislamyan, the owner of the store whose sign is pictured in the video, told ABC7 News that he saw about a 30% drop in business the day after the viral video was posted.
“I am really disappointed,” he told the station. “Recording my signs, my location, and talking about some kind of fraud going on here. We have nothing to do with it.”
Hey, but your sign has weird looking letters on it. Turkish Americans going after Armenian Americans. Such great optics! And really, what is this celebrity video supposed to do? As Oz himself says "CMS and law enforcement will keep doing the actual work: going after fraudsters, period.” Well, let them get on with it, then. Have they done as much as the state of California?
Since 2021 the state Department of Justice has charged 109 people with hospice-related fraud and filed 24 civil suits related to hospice fraud. In the last two years, 280 hospices have been shuttered with their licenses revoked, according to data from the California Department of Public Health, which oversees licensing.
At one point in the video, which was posted Tuesday on the agency’s official social media accounts, Oz stands in front of a sign for an Armenian bakery and says, “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”
In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, Newsom called on the agency to investigate “Dr. Oz’s baseless and racist allegations against Armenian Americans in California.”
Movses Bislamyan, the owner of the store whose sign is pictured in the video, told ABC7 News that he saw about a 30% drop in business the day after the viral video was posted.
“I am really disappointed,” he told the station. “Recording my signs, my location, and talking about some kind of fraud going on here. We have nothing to do with it.”
Hey, but your sign has weird looking letters on it. Turkish Americans going after Armenian Americans. Such great optics! And really, what is this celebrity video supposed to do? As Oz himself says "CMS and law enforcement will keep doing the actual work: going after fraudsters, period.” Well, let them get on with it, then. Have they done as much as the state of California?
Since 2021 the state Department of Justice has charged 109 people with hospice-related fraud and filed 24 civil suits related to hospice fraud. In the last two years, 280 hospices have been shuttered with their licenses revoked, according to data from the California Department of Public Health, which oversees licensing.
