Federal court clerk in LA busted for tipping off defendants

The arrest of Nune Gevorkyan, 35, and her husband Oganes Koshkaryan, 40, was just announced by the FBI and US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. The multi-agency Eurasian Organized Task Force, which also includes the LAPD and police in Glendale and Burbank, led the investigation. From the feds:

The defendants were charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles with conspiring to obstruct justice. Gevorkyan was arrested at her place of employment in the federal courthouse and Koshkaryan was arrested at his residence.

According to the complaint, in June 2012, Koshkaryan began providing an individual who was acting in an undercover capacity with Medicare beneficiary information in order to conduct Medicare fraud. Thereafter, the undercover advised Koshkaryan that another individual was willing to pay cash to gain access to confidential information from the federal court system. In response, Koshkaryan told the undercover that he could get confidential information from the court system in exchange for payment as long as he had a first and last name.

Following this conversation, on two separate occasions, the undercover provided Koshkaryan with the names of individuals who were actual defendants in a criminal case filed under seal in federal court. On both occasions, Koshkaryan then delivered to the undercover confidential information that had been obtained from the sealed court records, including that the named individuals were in fact the subject of pending federal arrest warrants, and accepted payment from the undercover for the information. Checks of electronic court records confirmed that that Gevorkyan, who was employed as a clerk in the Criminal Intake area of the district court’s clerk’s office, had accessed the sealed court records pertaining to the named individuals shortly after the undercover had delivered the names to Koshkaryan.