Southern California businesses say they are hurting after Dr. Oz video goes viral alleging local health care fraud – The Mercury News
The office of a Van Nuys real estate agency was quiet on a recent business day, with no customers or calls.
That was unusual, said owner Edward Akhparian.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed the change.
Some neighboring business owners also said that they were impressed after Dr. Mehmet Oz, the top federal health official in the Trump administration, posted a now-viral video in which he talks about alleged health care fraud rampant in Los Angeles County. In the video, Oz stood outside a small shopping center full of Armenian American businesses, including one he identified as a hospice.
Besides Akhparian’s office, other businesses located within that shopping center include an insurance company, a pharmacy and a food market. Owners of some of those companies said business dropped 20% to 30% for at least a few days after Oz’s Jan. 1 video. 27.
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Edgar Gabrielyan, owner and general manager of The 1 and Only Insurance, in his office on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, plays a video he posted on Facebook where Dr. Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, owes the Armenian people an apology. Oz posted a video on social media, filmed at the Van Nuys shopping center where Gabrielyan’s office is located, alleging widespread health care fraud in the area. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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Edgar Gabrielyan, owner and general manager of The 1 and Only Insurance, in his office on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, plays a video he posted on Facebook where Dr. Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, owes the Armenian people an apology. Oz posted a video on social media, filmed at the Van Nuys shopping center where Gabrielyan’s office is located, alleging widespread health care fraud in the area. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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It is not clear whether customers and clients are not leaving because of the fear that the surrounding businesses are linked to fraud in some way.
Or if it’s because of concerns that federal agents may soon be in the area, as happened in Minnesota after President Donald Trump announced a drop in fraud allegations at day care centers run by Somali citizens there.
Or there could be other reasons.
What is clear, business owners say, is that they are paying a price.
Akhparian, a merchant, moved to the shopping center at Victory Boulevard and Mammoth Avenue in the mid-1980s. Co-owner of Trimax Elite Corp. and Trimax Credit Repair, real estate and credit counseling companies, Akhparian said the lobby of his office is often lined with customers waiting to be seen. But foot traffic is down, he said, as he leads a Southern California News Group reporter and photographer into his empty office at noon Monday.
“People don’t come,” he said. “People are afraid.”
By the end of that week of work, Akhparian’s condition had worsened.
“Every day we usually get 15 to 20 customers,” he said on Friday. “Right now, it’s down to 4 or 5. It’s hard to make ends meet.”
Edgar Gabrielyan, owner and general manager of The 1 & Only Insurance Services, reported a similar loss of foot traffic. He posted a video on Facebook, saying Oz owes all Armenians an apology.
“He (Oz) just came and cursed at the mall, and he just left,” Gabrielyan said.
As a father, a homemaker and a small business owner, Gabrielyan spoke about his financial obligations – and not only to his family, but to three employees and their families, whose livelihoods depend on the payments from him.
“I’m angry,” he said. “I’m frustrated.”
Akhparian and Gabrielyan said the mall’s parking lot is often full. But on Monday, the lot — which has a dozen parking spaces — is about a third empty.
They attributed the slow footfall to a video that Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, posted on social media.
In it, Oz was driven around the world in a car. He said that there are 42 places where the terminally ill are kept that are registered in the area of four wards in that area, as he pointed out that there is a possibility of fraud.
He then stood outside the mall and pointed to a construction site on the second floor, identified it as a hospice and said it had uncovered a $3.5 billion fraud involving hospices and home health businesses in Los Angeles.
Oz said that “some” of the fraud was allegedly committed by “the Russian mafia in Armenia.”
“You can see that the words and the language behind me are from that dialect,” he said as the camera zoomed in on the sign of a bakery that sells lavash, a flat bread popular in Armenian culture.
The video drew immediate criticism from local community members and some elected officials from California, many, such as Rep. Laura Friedman, accusing Oz of identifying nationalism. Friedman is a Democrat from Glendale, which is home to a large Armenian population.
Also critical was Los Angeles City Council Member Adrin Nazarian, whose family members survived the Armenian genocide. A council member called Oz’s video “blatant racism.”
“Why the focus on the Armenian and Cyrillic languages?” Nazarian said in a video uploaded to YouTube. “Why are you bringing Armenian businesses closer?
“We Armenians know exactly what this is when we see it; it is propaganda,” added Nazarian.
Oz, who is of Turkish descent, was born in the US, but his dual citizenship and former service in the Turkish army were used as points of attack by his opponents when he failed to run for Pennsylvania’s US Senate seat in 2022. His opponents criticized his relationship with Turkey as the Turkish government did not recognize the Armenian Genocide that occurred in the early 1900s.
The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a human rights complaint with the US Department of Health and Human Services asking for an investigation following Oz’s video. In its letter, Newsom’s office accused Oz of spewing “baseless and racist allegations against the Armenian community.”
Responding to the governor’s office’s announcement that it was reviewing reports that Oz had targeted the Armenian American community, Oz said of X: “If there was a real defense about California’s fraud problem, we would hear it.
Neither the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services nor the US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Oz’s agency, responded to a request for further comment on this article.
To be sure, California has had its share of health care fraud, but Newsom and other elected officials insist the state was fixing the problem long before the Trump administration took office.
After a 2020 Los Angeles Times investigation into fraud among hospice providers, Newsom signed a bill that, beginning in 2022, mandated a freeze on new hospice licenses in the state. That ban goes into effect at the end of this year.
In addition, the California Department of Public Health has revoked the licenses of more than 280 hospices in the past two years and has identified nearly 300 other hospices under review for possible license revocation, according to the governor’s office.
On Thursday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the arrest of seven people accused of hospital fraud in Monterey County. He said the case shows that allegations that California is doing nothing to deal with fraud are not true.
“Fighting fraud is part of our regular, ongoing work, and over time we’ve built real expertise in identifying abuse, holding perpetrators accountable, and recovering taxpayer dollars,” Bonta said in a statement. “To suggest otherwise is wrong.”
Meanwhile, back at the mall in Van Nuys, while some customers stopped walking after the Oz video, others came out on their hands to support a small food market that opened in the area late last year.
Anna Khachatryan made a point of driving from nearby Burbank, where she lives, to shop at Sherman Way Marketplace earlier this week.
Khachatryan, who is Armenian-American, and her husband came out with ice cream and a bag of lavash. He said he wanted to support the business, the owner of which told KABC Channel 7 just days after the Oz video came out that his store saw a 30% drop in customers in one day. (The store owner, who also owns the bakery whose business logo is featured in Oz’s video, declined to comment further Thursday.)
And what about other business owners?
Akhparian, of Trimax, is still upset that Oz used the term “Russian Armenian mafia” while filming a video showing his business with others at the mall, calling the organization baseless.
“Mafia? Where’s the mafia? Where’s my gun?” Akhparian asked, slapping himself on the ground pretending to be someone looking for a weapon.
He said: “I’m not a mafia. “It worries me a lot.”
Staff writer Jason Henry contributed to this report.
