A Glendale man is scheduled to be sentenced March\u00a02 for conspiring to commit bank fraud in connection with a scheme that\u00a0submitted more than $1.9 million in falsified claims to the government for\u00a0COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.<\/p>\n
Sarkis Garadzhyan pleaded guilty Monday in Los Angeles federal court\u00a0to a single count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, according to the Internal\u00a0Revenue Service.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Garadzhyan and co-conspirators created and operated\u00a0multiple fake businesses, including one called Arizona Hospice Inc., to\u00a0fraudulently apply for federal pandemic relief program funds. The defendant\u00a0falsely claimed to have large payrolls at several shell companies and submitted\u00a0forged tax documents to support the applications, according to his plea\u00a0agreement.<\/p>\n
“Mr. Garadzhyan deliberately stole from programs designed to keep\u00a0American businesses afloat during a national emergency,” Tyler Hatcher, IRS\u00a0Criminal Investigation special agent in charge, Los Angeles bureau, said in a\u00a0statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Such blatant abuse of taxpayer-funded relief will not be\u00a0tolerated. The men and women of IRS-CI will continue to pursue criminals who\u00a0exploit pandemic relief funds.”
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Using stolen identities, Garadzhyan and his co-conspirators secured a\u00a0$150,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and a $929,433 Paycheck Protection\u00a0Program loan. They also obtained an additional $842,666 PPP loan in the name of\u00a0Arizona Hospice, which was later frozen by Bank of America due to suspected\u00a0fraud, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Despite knowing the funds were obtained fraudulently, the defendant\u00a0attempted to persuade the bank to release the money by falsely claiming it was\u00a0needed to meet payroll obligations — when, in fact, the company had no\u00a0employees, court papers show.<\/p>\n
Garadzhyan could face up to 30 years in federal prison at sentencing,\u00a0prosecutors said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Glendale man is scheduled to be sentenced March\u00a02 for conspiring to commit bank fraud in connection with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":405128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,1035,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-405127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-crime-and-courts","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115614049114020596","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}