Two Los Angeles convicts who escaped a life of European luxury under false names after running a pandemic fraud ring were extradited Thursday from Montenegro to the United States, the Montenegrin government said.
U. S. Marshals Service agents arrested fugitives Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian at the airport in Podgorica, Montenegro’s capital, police said.
The couple, who abandoned their three teenage children at the Tarzana mansion they bought partly with stolen COVID relief funds, were captured in February in the small mountainous country on Greece’s Adriatic coast.
They had flown there on a personal plane with fake Mexican passports and lived under false identities in a beachfront villa with a pool in picturesque Kotor Bay.
Ayvazyan and Terabelian were convicted in June 2021 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and similar federal crimes for stealing rescue loans for small businesses suffering from the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Along with six accomplices, they deployed for 151 loans from the most commonly fictitious businesses in the San Fernando Valley, fictitious payrolls and false tax returns to guarantee loans in a scam that generated $18 million.
Ayvazyan was sentenced in absentia last year to 17 years in prison and Terabelian to six years.
His scam is one of the most sinister of the scammers who appropriated the government’s rush to give businesses trillions of dollars in pandemic aid. The Department of Justice has charged more than 1500 more people in COVID fraud cases totaling more than $1100 million.
After cutting their ankle bracelets and fleeing in August 2021, Ayvazyan and Terabelian lived quietly for about six months like Roberto Niko De Leon and Nataly Rose Perez Garcia in Tivat, a Montenegrin town known for its luxury boutiques and superyacht harbor.
The FBI discovered they were in Montenegro when Ayvazyan tried to withdraw the budget from one of the bank accounts he had opened for a fake business as part of the COVID scam.
Montenegrin police arrested Terabelian at a salon in Tivat while she was getting hair extensions, and then tracked Ayvazyan down hours later at a hotel in Budva, a nearby nightlife hub.
They also arrested Tamara Dadyan, a third fugitive in the COVID scam, who was at the hotel with Ayvazyan, her brother-in-law. Montenegrin police said they had no data to disclose about Dadyan’s pending U. S. extradition request.
The EE. UU. no government responded to requests to verify the extradition of Ayvazyan and Terabelian.
Follow
Michael Finnegan is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who covers the federal courts and law enforcement. In the past, he covered national and national politics, adding the 2020 presidential campaign.
Subscribe to access
Follow