Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Oct 11 2004

A new gang problem

Russian-Armenian organized crime ‘like the 1930s New York mob’

By Jason Kandel
Staff Writer

GLENDALE — It wasn’t the price of cucumbers but murder that Eddy
Gyulnazaryan and his pals were talking about that day back in March
2001 in the backroom of his Atlas Pick pickle factory.

Rival Russian-Armenian gangs were at war and Gyulnazaryan, a beefy
40-year-old family man with the gift of gab, wanted some people
killed.

As he fired off several rounds into a stack of phone books,
Gyulnazaryan made an offer that couldn’t be refused — a $5,000
contract to “eliminate” a man who had gotten under his skin.

What Gyulnazaryan didn’t know was that one of the pals was wired. He
had turned and become a confidential informant working with an
organized crime task force that was able to use this information to
win convictions of the ringleader and five others on charges of
solicitation of murder.

At least 14 murders, 100 attempted killings and seven kidnappings
have been blamed on Russian-Armenian gangsters operating across the
San Fernando Valley region since 2000. The groups are fueled by
lucrative white collar frauds — including credit card, immigration,
auto insurance, cigarette tax evasion, identity theft, welfare and
health care.

“They’re very much organized criminals. They’re very violent. They’re
dangerous,” said Glendale police Sgt. Steve Davey, who heads the
Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force, comprising federal, state and
local authorities. “They’re not afraid of using violence to solve
their disputes. They shoot up homes and cars. It’s like the 1930s New
York mob.”

According to court documents and interviews, Gyulnazaryan wanted to
hire hit men to kill four unidentified men, two from Long Beach.
There also was a plan to hire jailed Latino gang members to kill two
of his rivals, Emil Airapetian 25, and Armen Sharopetrosian, 26, who
were also in jail.

Authorities said “there have been many documented shootings” between
the rival Russian-Armenian gangs in recent years.

Police said in court documents that they believed Gyulnazaryan’s
group was “heavily involved in credit card fraud, MediCal and
Medicare fraud, check fraud, drug trafficking, extortion and numerous
shootings, assaults and other violent crimes … and have access to
large sums of money obtained through their various criminal
enterprises.”

A break in the case The FBI got their break when Gyulnazaryan asked
one of his closest allies, with whom he had previously worked on auto
insurance fraud scams, if he would carry out a hit.

That man, who was not identified, had been an informant for the FBI
before. From then on, he agreed to wear a wire and secretly record
conversations among the group.

Offers of up to $20,000 were made to “eliminate” members of rival
criminal organizations. But the jailhouse killings proved too
complicated to carry out.

In March 2003, police raided the homes of Gyulnazaryan and his
associates Gayk Tadevosyan, 40; Gagik Galoyan, 55; Anthony Armenta,
25; Andranik Safaryan, 24; and Edgar Hatamian, 23. Gyulnazaryan
pleaded no contest Thursday to solicitation of murder charges and was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. The others pleaded no contest to
solicitation of murder charges and were sentenced to prison terms
ranging from three to nine years. Galoyan received a nine-year
suspended prison sentence and five years’ probation.

Galoyan had grown up with Gyulnazaryan in Armenia and went into
business with him at the pickle factory, which closed down two years
ago.

“These guys have come from Armenia. They have known each other for
years. They have grown up with each other,” said Galoyan’s attorney,
Fred Minassian. “My client is known in the Armenian community as an
elder statesman. In no way is he a mobster.”

Gyulnazaryan’s attorney, Michael Levin, said his client is not
violent and did not head up an organized crime ring.

“My client has got a big mouth. He likes to talk. But what the
(police) got on tape makes him sound like Tony Soprano,” he said.
“He’s a hard-working family man.”

Russian mob history Authorities said Russian mobs became more and
more prevalent in the United States in the 1990s as people from
former Soviet bloc countries began emigrating here. They settled in
New York, Brighton Beach, Fla., and Los Angeles. Up to 6,000 people
are connected with 15 loosely organized crime groups in the United
States that include Ukrainians, Lithuanians and, locally, Armenians.

In Glendale, where about a third of the 204,000 residents are
Armenian, police estimate that there are about 500 Armenian criminals
connected to organized crime.

Police have been challenged in trying to crack the rings because of a
lack of resources, a lack of familiarity with the culture and victims
too afraid to report the crimes.

Sukharenko Alexander, a senior fellow of the Organized Crime Study
Center of the Far East State University, said Russian-Armenian
syndicates are part of large international crime networks. They have
seemingly infinite resources and escape routes to countries with no
extradition treaties.

“This allows them to launder huge amounts of money, smuggle drugs and
stolen vehicles, and import criminals to carry out contract murders
and fraud,” Alexander said.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s Detective Alex Gilinets, who works the
Major Crimes Bureau, said the groups are not always bound by strict
rules or regulations like the old-time mobs and can be more violent.

“It’s, who can I make my next big buck with?” Gilinets said.

Sara Vinson, a criminal intelligence analyst with the state Justice
Department’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit, said victims are too
scared to come forward.

“Their fear of organized crime groups is bigger than their fear of
our criminal justice system,” Vinson said. “A lot of them have family
back home that they can’t protect, and they have that hanging over
their head.”

LAPD Detective Martin Pinner is having a hard time getting witnesses
to come forward from a murder in North Hollywood. Karapet
Ksadzhikyan, 50, was ambushed by two men in a suspected mob hit as he
walked to his bread delivery truck outside his home in the 13000
block of Archwood Street on Nov. 24.

“No one cooperates,” he said. “No one’s saying anything. No one knows
anything.”

Glendale police and city officials, including Mayor Bob Yousefian,
himself an Iranian-Armenian-American, has been pushing for more cops,
especially Armenian-speaking officers, to fight the scourge.

But they face an uphill battle. Many deny there is an organized crime
problem.

“We don’t have the manpower to dedicate officers to task forces,”
Yousefian said.

“We’re getting to the point that we have this huge elephant standing
in the middle of the room, and we all have closed our eyes. Everybody
is saying there is no elephant there. We have an issue. We need to
deal with it.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress