Epress.am News from Armenia
“One of the members of the Armenian-American crime syndicate, who we weren’t able to arrest on Wednesday, this morning voluntarily surrendered to the authorities,” said Special Agent in Charge of the New York Criminal Division of the FBI Diego Rodriguez in a Voice of America interview.
Rodriguez was referring to Vahan Stepanyan, which the FBI has named as one of the leaders of the New York branch of the Armenian gang who was charged earlier this week by US authorities in the country’s largest Medicare scam.
According to the FBI, Stepanyan participated in a conspiracy to obtain credit cards under false names. Furthermore, he is suspected to have lied when completing official documents for immigration to the United States.
The US Federal Prosecutor’s indictment documents presented this week recalls an incident that took place on May 29, 2009. That day, Stepanyan, together with another suspect, Robert Terdjanian, and their associates, in one of the restaurants on Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, “talked” with a member of another gang who owed money to Terdjanian. The latter took out a knife and threatened to literally “spill the guts of the debtor.”
Following Stepanyan’s arrest, two more suspects remain wanted. The majority of the gang members are either Armenians or citizens of the Republic of Armenia. According to Rodriguez, about half the suspects are US citizens (from the full list of suspects).
Note that earlier Armenia’s Prosecutor General declared its readiness to cooperate and assist their US colleagues in uncovering the specifics of the mafia group’s activities. However, Press Secretary of the Prosecutor General Sona Truzyan stated that “Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s office has not received official information from US law enforcement bodies concerning this case,” adding that the RA Prosecutor General’s office found out about the case from the media.
Rodriguez noted that the suspects regularly traveled to Armenia, which allowed them to export the funds obtained from their criminal activities outside of the United States.
According to him, the arrests carried out this week “dealt a severe blow to the Armenian group.”
“We were able to apprehend the ringleaders of the group, including kingpin Armen Kazarian,” he said.
According to the FBI agent, during the operation against the Armenian crime syndicate, US authorities confiscated 5 houses worth a million dollars each, a few cars, including a Maserati and almost a million dollars in cash from Kazarian and other members of his gang.
“We continue to check the bank accounts of the suspects,” added Rodriguez.