Richard Ayvazyan gets 17 years in prison for huge L.A. pandemic loan scam, wife Marietta Terabelian gets 6 years, brother Artur Ayvazyan gets 5 years
When convicted Tarzana swindlers Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian sliced off their electronic monitoring bracelets and vanished in August, the couple left a note for the three teenage children they abandoned.
The group created scores of fictitious San Fernando Valley businesses, attaching fake payrolls and forged tax returns to many of their 151 loan applications. To open bank accounts for the sham businesses, they used the names of people who were dead or whose identities were stolen. The judge also voiced concern that this kind of "flagrant" fraud could deter lawmakers from approving bailouts during future catastrophes for "fear of being ripped off as they were here."
That would have been the longest prison term in the nation so far for anyone sentenced in a federal pandemic loan fraud case, according to Ashwin J. Ram, Ayvazyan's attorney. A few days after they took flight, prosecutors say, Ayvazyan and Terabelian were caught on video entering the Encino house where Ayvazyan's mother lives, but they left before they could be arrested.
Wilson ordered both Terabelian and Ayvazyan to pay a $50,000 fine, but said he was not ready to decide on the government's request for more than $16 million in restitution.