LOS ANGELES — The ringleader of a check-kiting scheme who conspired with his wife and other family members to defraud banks out of more than $1.7 million has been sentenced to more than six years behind bars, officials announced Wednesday.
Ara Malkhasyan, 52, of Winnetka, was sentenced late Tuesday to 81 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee, who will schedule a restitution hearing in the coming weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Malkhasyan pleaded guilty in April 2021 to one federal count each of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.
From May 2015 to September 2017, Malkhasyan and his co-conspirators obtained genuine Armenian passports issued to other people, altered the passports to include the photos of themselves, and used the fraudulent documents to obtain other identity documents and to open bank accounts at the victim banks, prosecutors said.
Malkhasyan and his accomplices used the bank accounts, which were opened in the names that appeared on the altered passports, to write bad checks to other fraudulently obtained bank accounts. They exploited bank rules that allowed them to transfer money from one account to another, and then to immediately withdraw funds at ATMs in Las Vegas casinos and other locations before the checks bounced, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In total, Malkhasyan and his co-conspirators used 331 fraudulently altered Armenian passports to unlawfully obtain $1.3 million from Bank of America, prosecutors said.
In a separate scheme, from April 2017 to May 2019, Malkhasyan conspired with his brother-in-law, Smbat Khechumyan, 41, of North Hollywood, to conduct a similar forged and fraudulent check scheme in which one of them would open a Wells Fargo account using a stolen Armenian passport, counterfeit Ukrainian or Belarusian passport, deposit forged checks into the account, and then withdraw funds from the account through ATMs at Las Vegas casinos. Wells…
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