Federal Court Employee and Husband Arrested for Accessing Confidential Information to Tip Off Defendants in Sealed Court Documents

An employee with the federal district court clerk’s office in Los Angeles and her husband were arrested Tuesday on charges that they accessed confidential information contained in sealed court documents in order to tip off defendants prior to planned arrests by law enforcement personnel, announced Timothy Delaney, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, and André Birotte, Jr., the United States Attorney for Los Angeles. The announcement was made on behalf of the Eurasian Organized Task Force, whose members include the Glendale Police Department; the Los Angeles Police Department; the Burbank Police Department; the United States Secret Service; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and the FBI.

Nune Gevorkyan, 35, and Oganes Koshkaryan, 40, both of Hollywood, were taken into custody this afternoon without incident. 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 subjects of pending federal arrest warrants, and he 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.

Gevorkyan made her initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon, and Koshkaryan is scheduled to make his initial appearance today.

If convicted of the charges in the complaint the defendants face a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.

This case is a continuing investigation by the Eurasian Organzied Crime Task Force, which is composed of agents with the FBI; U.S. Secret Service; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and federally deputized state law enforcement officers with local agencies, including the Glendale Police Department; the Los Angeles Police Department; and the Burbank Police Department. Koshkaryan and Gevorkyan will be prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office.

A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in court.