Hollywood Couple Sentenced to Prison

A former Los Angeles federal court employee and her husband were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for their roles in a scheme to peddle secret information from sealed court records to members of an Armenian crime syndicate.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald said the leak of confidential information by Nune Gevorkyan to indicted criminals prior to arrest was a betrayal that "could easily have led to someone in law enforcement being killed.''

Gevorkyan was sentenced to six months in federal prison, and her husband, Oganes Koshkaryan, to 57 months.

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, Gevorkyan -- who worked in the criminal intake division of the clerk's office of the downtown federal courthouse -- leaked details of a sealed 70-defendant racketeering indictment related to Armenian organized crime, among other cases, to her husband, who was attempting to sell the information.

In at least one case, a defendant fled after finding out his arrest was imminent, Estrada said.

"This is an incredibly serious offense,'' the prosecutor told the judge. "It involves not just corruption, but also corruption at the federal level, which, fortunately, we rarely see.''

Estrada said Gevorkyan's offense was a breach of trust that "impugns the trust the public has in the court system.'' It was also possible that the leak could have resulted in ``tragic consequences for the officers serving the search warrants,'' he added.

The judge explained that he was lenient in sentencing Gevorkyan because she has two minor children and difficulty finding care for them if she is not present.

If not for the mitigating factors, Fitzgerald told the weeping woman, "you would be getting a sentence of 18 months.''

Gevorkyan, 35, previously pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Her 40-year-old husband pleaded guilty to the conspiracy count, as well as health care fraud and other charges.

The Hollywood couple were charged in a 27-count grand jury indictment last August.

According to court papers, Gevorkyan gave confidential information gleaned from sealed documents to Koshkaryan -- who has personal and family ties to the Armenian Power crime organization -- regarding at least three gang members and various cases.

In February 2011, about 100 members and associates of Armenian Power -- including a relative of Koshkaryan -- were indicted on a range of charges,
including kidnapping, extortion, bank and identity theft and drug trafficking.  

Gevorkyan also used her access to help Koshkaryan provide someone who turned out to be an undercover operative with Medicare beneficiary information in order to conduct Medicare fraud, prosecutors said.

The operative then told Koshkaryan that a third person was willing to pay cash to get confidential information from the federal court system, according to court documents.

Koshkaryan responded that he could get secret information from the court system in exchange for cash as long as he had a first and last name, federal prosecutors said.

Checks of electronic court records confirmed that Gevorkyan had accessed the sealed court records pertaining to the named defendants shortly after the person working with authorities had delivered the names to Koshkaryan.

"For all the problems of civic life in Los Angeles, it is a place remarkably free of corruption,'' Fitzgerald said, adding that residents are less likely to offer or take bribes in the Southland.

With her offense, Gevorkyan "struck a blow to the public life of the city,'' the judge said, telling her she "betrayed your co-workers ... who would never dream of doing this."

- City News Service