LOS ANGELES
A California man was indicted today for his role in a mass mailing scam targeting holders of U.S. trademarks, officials said today
Artashes Darbinyan, 35, of Glendale, California, was charged in California with 12 counts of mail fraud and four counts of aggravated identity theft.
His arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 19.
According to the indictment, these are the allegations:
From September 2013 through September 2015, Darbinyan operated and controlled the Trademark Compliance Center or TCC, aka Trademark Compliance Office or TCO, which purported to offer trademark registration and monitoring services.
Through TCC and TCO, Darbinyan sent mass solicitations to holders of trademarks recently registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offering, for a fee, to register the holders’ trademarks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which uses an Intellectual Property Rights database to screen and block imports of infringing products, and to send users of its service regular reports of potentially confusing or infringing marks.
According to the indictment, Darbinyan did not intend to, and did not, provide the promised services.
Perpetuate the scheme and to avoid detection Darbinyan used the names of other persons to open accounts for TCC and TCO at “virtual office centers” (i.e., businesses that offered call answering and mail forwarding services) in the Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles areas.
Darbinyan’s businesses directed employees of the Washington, D.C.-area virtual office centers to forward to the virtual office centers in the Los Angeles area mail addressed to TCC and TCO.
These forwarded envelopes contained payments from trademark holders for the aforementioned trademark registration and monitoring services, which Darbinyan retrieved and deposited into bank accounts that he controlled.
The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.