Armenian Power Gang

It started as an investigation into an Armenian crime ring suspected of running credit card scams out of a Glendale pickle factory. But thanks to a stroke of luck -- the help of an informant -- authorities believe they stumbled upon a lethal page in the group's business plan: hiring hit men to eliminate seven members of a rival criminal organization.

It started as an investigation into an Armenian crime ring suspected of running credit card scams out of a Glendale pickle factory. But thanks to a stroke of luck -- the help of an informant -- authorities believe they stumbled upon a lethal page in the group's business plan: hiring hit men to eliminate seven members of a rival criminal organization.

A Sun Valley gang member was sentenced to 90 days in jail Friday for carrying a loaded pistol in his car and ordered to stay away from gangs and guns, authorities said. Eduard Petrosyan, 20, was stopped by police in Van Nuys shortly after 4 a.m. Sept. 13. The Armenian Power gang member was driving his car in another gang's territory and police had heard a radio report of shots fired, Deputy City Atty. Debra Siedorf said.

I must report my dismay at the amount of time and space you allowed the Armenian Power gang articles on Aug. 17 and 18. The gang was spotlighted, and too often positively. The stories were done in such a way as to only make these gang members proud, and I wouldn't be surprised if it boosted initiations into their ranks. It was almost as if they were being patted on the back. What was even more alarming, however, was the way the gang was represented as being of help to the L.A. Police Department by brutalizing transvestite prostitutes at Hollywood and Normandie.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Friday reduced bail for a 14-year-old girl charged in the May killing of a student outside Hoover High School in Glendale. The bail for Anait Ano Msyran, who was charged as an adult with first-degree murder, was reduced from $1 million to $250,000. Judge Larry Fidler ruled that if the family cannot raise the money, it could put up $500,000 worth of property as security.

A federal court employee in Los Angeles has been charged with leaking confidential court files, the FBI said Wednesday. Nune Gevorkyan, 35, was accused of accessing sealed court documents and giving the information to defendants before they were arrested, officials said. Gevorkyan and her husband, Oganes Koshkaryan, were arrested Tuesday. They are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice. Federal authorities said they believe Gevorkyan looked at sealed indictments before raids across Southern California in February 2011 that led to the arrests of more than 70 people associated with the Armenian Power gang.

U.S. prosecutors accused an Armenian organized crime gang of bilking victims out of an estimated $20 million in an audacious series of financial scams that included replacing the credit-card machines at more than a dozen 99 Cent-Only stores with their own scanners designed to steal customers' banking information. The charges filed Wednesday against alleged members and associates of the Armenian Power gang included allegations of two kidnappings, theft of money from elderly bank customers, the smuggling of cellphones into state prisons, and trafficking in drugs and weapons.

Three people, including a 16-year-old girl, were ordered Wednesday to stand trial in the stabbing death of a student who tried to break up a gang fight outside his Glendale high school. Anait Msryan, 16; Rafael Gevorgyan, 17; and Karen Terteryan, 20, are charged with murder in the May 5, 2000, gang slaying of 17-year-old Raul Aguirre, the attempted murder of rival gang member Jimmy Orozco and street terrorism.

Two Armenian American teenagers murdered Hoover High School senior Raul Aguirre near the campus three years ago in a brutal show of gang pride, prosecutors told jurors Thursday. In contrast, defense attorneys said Aguirre died tragically during a brawl stemming from ethnic tensions between Armenians and Latinos in Glendale.

When 15-year-old Armen Petrosyan arrived in east Hollywood from Armenia in 1989, he was thrust into an urban environment where large, long-established street gangs--in this case, Mexican American and Salvadoran--often preyed on a smaller group of new immigrants. Outnumbered, Petrosyan and two friends formed a defense alliance that grew into the Armenian Power street gang, which at its peak in the mid-1990s had about 120 members.

Identity theft is soaring in California, and street gangs are angling for a piece of the action. Recent cases point to an interest in identity fraud by organizations as diverse as a Long Beach chapter of the Crips, the Armenian Power gang and the prison-based Mexican Mafia, according to law enforcement officials and fraud experts. The trend among criminals better known for violence and drug trafficking goes against type.