The brother of Levon Termendzhyan, a Southern California gasoline magnate who was convicted of defrauding the U.S. authorities in a renewable power rip-off, has been indicted on costs of laundering hundreds of thousands in stolen cash.
Grigor Termendjian was charged with cash laundering, conspiring to commit cash laundering and conspiring to defraud the federal authorities, data present. A grand jury in Salt Lake Metropolis handed up the indictment in March, and the case turned public solely not too long ago.
Termendjian’s youthful brother, who’s also referred to as Lev Aslan Dermen, was sentenced final month to 40 years in jail. He was convicted in 2020 of conspiring with members of a Utah-based polygamist sect to assert tax credit for biofuel they by no means produced. The scheme fleeced the U.S. Treasury of about $511 million, a lot of which has not been recovered, prosecutors stated.
About $133 million was despatched to accounts in Turkey and Luxembourg held by Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, prosecutors stated within the indictment towards Termendjian. A businessman with ties to Turkish authorities officers, Korkmaz was arrested in Austria and extradited final yr to Utah, the place he has pleaded not responsible to costs of cash laundering, wire fraud and witness tampering.
About half the cash despatched abroad — $63 million — was re-routed to U.S. accounts managed by Termendjian and his brother, prosecutors alleged. The indictment costs that Termendjian, together with unnamed conspirators, sought to disguise the supply of the cash by misrepresenting the transfers as investments, loans and share purchases, drawing up phony paperwork to make the transactions seem authentic.
Termendjian and his associates used the cash to purchase a waterfront house in Huntington Seaside in 2015 and different property comparable to an condo constructing and heavy equipment, in line with the indictment. In a single occasion, the doc says, he used funds from an account he shared along with his brother to buy two cashier’s checks, $21 million and $20 million apiece, made payable to himself.
Termendjian has pleaded not responsible to cash laundering and conspiracy costs. Not like his brother, Termendjian was not detained and required solely to give up his U.S. and Armenian passports. Termendzhyan, nonetheless, was held with out bail after prosecutors painted him as a flight danger with entry to non-public planes and hundreds of thousands in abroad accounts.
Termendjian’s lawyer didn’t return a request for remark.
Earlier than he was indicted, Termendjian was warding off the federal government’s effort to grab property that prosecutors preserve had been purchased with stolen cash: a $3.5-million mansion in Huntington Seaside, a automobile wash in Van Nuys, an workplace constructing in Corona and a liquefied pure gasoline plant within the Mojave desert.
The plant, which Termendjian started constructing in 2011, would convert 100,000 gallons of pure gasoline a day into liquid kind, his lawyer, Sam Meziani, wrote in courtroom papers. It stays below building.
Meziani stated Termendjian offered his brother a 50% share within the challenge for $18 million in “good religion,” unaware of the “advanced and well-hidden IRS fraud for which his brother was convicted.”
Meziani claimed Termendzhyan not has an curiosity within the facility. The brothers fell out in 2015, he wrote. Now not on talking phrases, Termendzhyan instructed their father at a celebration for his mom the next yr that he wished out of the challenge. “In deference to his father,” Meziani wrote, Termendjian agreed to return his brother’s cash.
Termendjian emigrated from Armenia along with his household when he was 16, settling in Los Angeles, Meziani wrote. He bought a job at a jewellery retailer earlier than shopping for one among his personal at 21, whereas serving to his father run a gasoline station in Hollywood at night time.
When Termendjian was 30, he and his brother had been arrested by Inside Income Service brokers on costs of pocketing taxes owed on diesel. The scheme allowed them to undercut authentic distributors who had been paying the excise tax, which made up as a lot as one-third of the worth of gasoline, officers stated on the time.
The brothers had been acquitted in that case. Termendzhyan would commerce on its final result, telling his associates he bought off by paying the authorities overseeing his case a $10-million bribe, Leslie Goemaat, an assistant U.S. lawyer, wrote in courtroom papers.
His conspirators within the Utah-based fraud testified they despatched hundreds of thousands to accounts below Termendzhyan’s management, believing they had been buying the safety of what he known as “the umbrella.”
No proof has emerged to help Termendzhyan’s alleged declare of shopping for his manner out of the tax case, however it’s undisputed that he surrounded himself with corrupt regulation enforcement officers. Amongst them had been John Saro Balian, a Glendale narcotics detective and the division’s former spokesman, and Felix Cisneros Jr., a Homeland Safety Investigations agent. Each males had been convicted of corruption-related offenses and despatched to jail.
Earlier than his brother was sentenced in April, Termendjian wrote in a letter to U.S. District Choose Jill N. Parrish that the 2 haven’t spoken in almost eight years.
Regardless of their “variations,” Termendjian wrote, “I do know that deep down he is an efficient particular person.”
