LOS ANGELES
A Glendale man plead guilty today to federal money laundering and tax charges related to a scheme in which he helped launder $1.1 million generated by a health care fraud scheme, officials said.
Khachatour Hakobyan, 47, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to commit money laundering and filing a false tax return.
A second defendant in this case – Aram Aramyan, 59, also of Glendale – plead guilty on July 13 to the same two felony offenses.
In plea agreements, officials said Hakobyan and Aramyan admitted that they deposited over $1.1 million in proceeds derived from a health care fraud scheme into bank accounts in the names of bogus corporations they established “primarily to launder money.”
Once the proceeds were deposited, Hakobyan and Aramyan wrote checks from these corporations to themselves and their associates, officials said.
Hakobyan and Aramyan further admitted that they cashed some of the checks – and directed their associates to cash others – and returned the cash to the medical entities, typically after deducting a 10 percent commission.
In some cases, they deposited the checks into their personal accounts and used the money to pay personal expenses, such as mortgage payments, rent and home remodeling costs, according to authorities.
As part of their guilty pleas, Hakobyan and Aramyan each admitted that they failed to report all of their income from the corporations in their 2009 tax returns and have agreed to pay, respectively, $606,681 and $353,669 in back taxes for tax years 2007 through 2011.
As a result of their guilty pleas, Hakobyan and Aramyan each face a statutory maximum sentence of 23 years in federal prison.
Hakobyan is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 16, and Aramyan on Nov. 2.
There are three remaining defendants in this case: Edgar Hakobyan, Karen Sarkissian and L’Tanya Smith. They are currently scheduled to go on trial on Feb. 2.