Armenian Business In Dr. Oz Video About Hospice Fraud Is A Bakery, NOT Scene Of Hospice Or Home Care Prosecutions
Lead Stories
Is the business featured in a recent video by Dr. Mehmet Oz related to hospice and home care fraud in Los Angeles? No, that’s not true: The business is a family-owned and operated bakery and market and there is no evidence that implicates the business in any fraud prosecution or to the hospice and home care industry. Several other busine
The claim first appeared in a Jan. 26, 2026 video posted on Dr. Oz’s official X (archived here) and Instagram (archived here) account as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It included the caption: “L.A. County has become an epicenter for health care fraud in America.” It continued:
Criminals have corrupted the system so much that fraud is now almost expected. President Trump has made it clear: we will not tolerate the patient harm or taxpayer funded theft any longer. More to come.
Here’s a screenshot of the moment in the video when he points to businesses, including the bakery, he says are part of a hospice and home care fraud problem:
The video opens with Dr. Oz in the backseat of a car, driving around Van Nuys, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County, and pointing out businesses with Armenian and Cyrillic writing and alleging ties to healthcare fraud.
In the next shot, he stands in the middle of a strip mall among several businesses, alleging $3.5 billion of fraud taking place in L.A. in hospice and home care. In the video he says:
“It’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia. You notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect.”
The lettering Oz refers to is in Armenian, and reads “Թարմ լավաշ” or “Fresh Lavash,” referring to the flat, unleavened bread prepared in Armenian cuisine, in addition to English branding above that reads, “Tigranakert,” which is a reference to the 1st century BC capital of the Armenian Kingdom.
According to original reporting from ABC7, the Westcoast flagship station of ABC (archived here), the sign is on property that belongs to Movses Bislamyan, the owner and operator of the nearby bakery and grocery store Sherman Way Marketplace. “We have nothing to do with it, it has nothing to do whatsoever with the grocery store,” Bislamyan told ABC7. “There is no Armenian mafia going on here,” he said. Bislamyan has not responded to Lead Stories’ requests for comment at the time this article was published. Lead Stories will update this article if a response is received.
Lead Stories California staff checked available public records to ascertain whether the businesses shown were part of the Justice Department fraud investigation to which Oz refers.
In 2010, federal prosecutors charged members (archived here) of an Armenian-American organized crime ring with various health care fraud-related crimes involving more than $163 million in fraudulent Medicare billings, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In all, 44 defendants (archived here) were charged in the Southern District of New York (archived here), seven (
A review by Lead Stories found that none of the individuals or businesses referenced in Dr. Oz’s video are named among the defendants in the federal indictment associated with that case.
To double-check, Lead Stories reviewed ownership records.
The strip mall he stands in front of was once home to Tigranakert Meat Market. While Tigranakert Meat Market has been established since 2017, the business itself was created more than 25 years ago and previously operated under a different name (Karabagh), according to history included about the business on Yelp by designated business owner, Anna I.
Records from a “Business Search” on the California Secretary of State website confirm that Tigranakert Meat Market was established in 2017.
