Eddie Akhparian, co-owner of Primax Elite Corp., a real estate services firm, sits at his desk in his Van Nuys office. He said business had dropped significantly after Dr. Oz's January video scared away customers. (Photo by Matt Hamilton/L.A. Material)
LOS ANGELES IS BUT A CONSTELLATION of strip malls, and in January, Dr. Mehmet Oz — the Oprah health guru turned Trump appointee overseeing Medicare and Medicaid — made one of those strip malls infamous.
Standing in a parking lot near Woodman Avenue and Victory Boulevard in the Valley, Oz filmed a two-minute video in which he pointed to a boarded up shop “above my head” and said it was a hospice center linked to a $16 million fraud case, part of roughly $3.5 billion worth of fraud he said was taking place in L.A., with “quite a bit of it” run by the “Russian Armenian mafia.”
Oz then gestured to a sign above his shoulder: “You notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect.”
The sign in question said “Tigranakert Lavash,” and belonged to Tigranakert Meat Market, a bakery, market and catering outfit. Throughout Oz’s video, in which he suggests that organized crime is behind the 42 hospices operating in a four-block area in Van Nuys, the Tigranakert sign is visible above his shoulder.
This week, the owner of Tigranakert, Anna Ivanyan, sued Oz and his company for defamation, slander and negligence stemming from publication of the video, which was posted on Oz’s official government X account and has been viewed more than 4.6 million times.
The suit said that Oz’s Jan. 27 video was “misleading and defamatory” and falsely accused Ivanyan and her business of being involved in the Armenian mafia and healthcare fraud.
California officials have uncovered hospice fraud concentrated in the San Fernando Valley, Burbank and Glendale, with a 2022 state audit pointing to “a large‑scale, organized effort to defraud the Medicare and Medi‑Cal hospice programs.” Federal and state officials have also touted their crackdown on hospice fraud.
But Ivanyan runs a bakery and meat market, not a hospice. Ivanyan “has absolutely nothing to do with illegal, organized crime,” said a paralegal at her lawyer’s office, Alassandra Lopez.
“He should make sure he is not going to put an innocent, hardworking family’s business at risk,” said Lopez, explaining that Ivanyan, whose market has been lauded for its kebabs, started getting tagged on social media and receiving hateful messages soon after Oz’s video went viral.
“She was absolutely distraught, like, ‘What the heck is going on?’” Lopez said, adding that Oz’s video not only spread across the U.S. but also reached audiences in Armenia, Europe and Latin America. Now, her reputation in the Armenian community and beyond is damaged, according to Lopez and the lawsuit.
A Van Nuys shopping center where Dr. Mehmet Oz filmed a video about hospice fraud. One of the strip mall's tenants -- the owner of a food market -- sued Oz this week for defamation, claiming that Oz falsely accused her and her business of healthcare fraud. (Matt Hamilton/L.A. Material)
The video came at a precarious time in Ivanyan’s business. A fire last year forced Ivanyan to largely close down except for occasional events. Lopez said that she hopes the store will come “back stronger once everything is fixed up and renovated.”
Lopez, who is half-Armenian and half-Central American, was a customer of Ivanyan’s market, which sold meats, imported Armenian foods, and lavash, an Armenian flatbread. Lopez said she reached out after seeing Oz’s video online, which led to the lawsuit against Oz. The lawsuit also names several local television stations as defendants for republishing the defamatory video.
Oz’s video also panned to other businesses in the strip mall along Victory Boulevard, home to a dental office, pharmacy, notary and the Sherman Way Marketplace.
Among the complex’s oldest tenants is Eddie Akhparian, co-owner of a real estate brokerage, Primax Elite Corp., which has had an office there since the 1980s. Akhparian said Oz’s video triggered a massive drop in business, scaring away current and prospective clients for him and neighboring shops.
“It affected us big time. The parking lot was empty for a long time,” he said. “The sofas used to be full,” Akhparian continued, pointing to the empty couches and chairs in the lobby of his second-story office.
After the video, clients called asking, “Is everything ok? We heard there is a raid going on.”
Local officials, including Gov. Newsom and Sen. Adam Schiff, denounced Oz’s video as a racist smear on Armenian-owned small businesses.
Akhparian, who came to the U.S. from Armenia in 1977 and became a U.S. citizen in 1981, noted that there has been longstanding tension between the Armenian-American community and Oz. Oz has Turkish citizenship, and Armenian-American groups have long criticized his refusal to condemn Turkey’s role in the Armenian genocide. Oz, meanwhile, has renounced efforts to claim he had dual loyalties to Turkey and the U.S. as “reminiscent of slurs made in the past about Catholics and Jews,” NBC reported in 2022.
“When he was trying to run as a Senator, Armenians did not like him at all,” Akhparian recalled, referring to the efforts by Armenian-American groups to oppose his Pennsylvania Senate campaign.
A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not respond to a message seeking comment. L.A. Material contacted Oz’s company and did not receive a response.
Matt Hamilton is a Senior Reporter for L.A. Material.
