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Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian: PPP thieves cut off ankle monitors and flee

Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian from LA spent the money on a $3.25-million Mediterranean-style villa, gold coins, diamond earrings, and more
UPDATED SEP 2, 2021
Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian were convicted in June of fraudulently securing at least $21 million in COVID-19 relief funds. (FBI)
Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian were convicted in June of fraudulently securing at least $21 million in COVID-19 relief funds. (FBI)

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: A couple from Tarzana, a suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, are on the run from federal authorities after cutting off their ankle monitors and fleeing. Richard Ayvazyan, 43, and Marietta Terabelian, 37, were convicted in June of conspiring with family members and others to fraudulently secure at least $21 million in COVID-19 relief funds

At the end of the trial, Ayvazyan’s attorney, Ashwin J Ram, argued that his client posed no flight risk as long as he was required to wear a location monitoring bracelet. “While there is simply no reason for Ayvazyan to flee anywhere, it would be impossible for him to do so when he cannot even leave his driveway without the government’s knowledge,” Ram wrote in court papers. “And if Ayvazyan wanted to flee, he would have done so already.”

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As per reports, the group, led by Ayvazyan, created a bunch of fictitious San Fernando Valley businesses to secure 151 loans under the Paycheck Protection and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs. On June 25, a federal jury in Los Angeles convicted Ayvazyan, Terabelian, and two relatives for their roles in the scam. Four accomplices reportedly pleaded guilty on the eve of trial.

“They have international ties as well as local ties but we’re not ruling anything out as to where they may have fled,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told reporters. Federal authorities also believe that the couple fled on Sunday afternoon, August 29, from the $3.25-million house in Tarzana that they bought with the loan money they stole, Eimiller said. The couple was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and other related crimes. The government right now is in the process of confiscating the house.

As per the LA Times, starting in March 2020, the couple and their six co-conspirators used stolen identities to set up bank accounts for several Los Angeles shell companies that submitted fake payrolls and forged tax returns with their applications for emergency loans under the Paycheck Protection Program, a $953-billion business loan program established by the United States federal government in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) sets up a sign alongside a bipartisan group of Democrat and Republican members of Congress as they announce a proposal for a Covid-19 relief bill on Capitol Hill on December 01, 2020 in Washington, DC. The roughly $908 billion proposal includes $288 billion in small business aid such as Paycheck Protection Program loans, $160 billion in state and local government relief and $180 billion to fund a $300 per week supplemental unemployment benefit through March, according to a draft framework. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

As per a July report in the Times, when the couple was returning from a Caribbean beach vacation last October, they were caught by customs agents, who found Ayvazyan was carrying credit cards in the name of “Iuliia Zhadko.” Terabelian had one belonging to “Viktoria Kauichko.” The FBI had been investigating “Zhadko” and “Kauichko” for months. They were later arrested after questioning.

As per the Times, in June 2020, Ayvazyan and Terabelian put $640,000 in pandemic disaster loans into their aforementioned $3.25-million Mediterranean-style villa with a panoramic view of the Valley. When the 2.6-acre estate was raided by FBI agents, they found about $450,000 in cash in a grocery bag. They also confiscated gold coins, diamond earrings, a $35,000 Rolex that Ayvazyan bought while on holiday in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

More than $400,000 from that loan was spent on furniture, diamonds, jewelry, and gold coins for Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian, prosecutors claim. The money obtained was also used for buying “fine imported furnishings, designer handbags, clothing, and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle,” according to a June 29 announcement from the US attorney's office.

Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian. (South Florida Records)

Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian's relationship

Ayvazyan met Terabelian at a party in 2001. They married a couple of years later and went on to have three children. For a time, Terabelian ran a kids’ hair salon in Sherman Oaks. The couple’s three teenage children did not flee with them.

The couple was arrested for submitting fake tax returns to get a $500,000 line of credit on their house in Encino. After they pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud, their lawyers, seeking leniency at sentencing, faulted banks for their loose lending standards. Both were spared prison time. “My purpose was not to make an illegal profit, but to provide my family and myself with a fine place to live,” Ayvazyan told U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney in a letter at the time. “My own sense of guilt and shame over what I have done is magnified a hundred times when I look into the eyes of my children.”

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