Sister raising L.A. swindlers' abandoned kids must forfeit $100,000 in bail, judge rules

When a couple of convicted L.A. swindlers abandoned their three children and fled with the family dog to Montenegro in 2021, the distraught teenagers' aunt, Gohar Abelian, took the kids into her home.

It was the second time she'd come to the rescue since the children's parents, Richard Ayvazyan and Abelian's sister Marietta Terabelian, were arrested in 2020 for running an $18-million pandemic relief scam: To keep the couple out of jail, Abelian had spent more than $100,000 on bail bonds.

Abelian lost all of that money after the couple, by then convicted, jumped bail, leaving a goodbye note for the kids at the Tarzana mansion they bought with stolen money and taking a private jet to a picturesque Montenegrin town where they lived incognito for nearly six months in a posh seaside villa. They were captured last year and extradited.

On Wednesday, a federal judge denied Abelian's request to set aside the bail forfeiture judgment, saying it was "admirable" that she took custody of her niece and nephews, but not a good enough reason to let her off the hook.

"By enforcing the terms of the bail bond, this court is furthering a deterrent of exactly the international absconding that occurred in this case by showing that the terms of bail will be enforced by the court system," U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson wrote.

Reached by phone on Saturday, Abelian, a Glendale attorney, declined to comment.

"I have nothing to say," she said.

Federal law enforcement authorities are investigating the circumstances of the couple's escape, "including potential accomplices," prosecutors disclosed in a recent court filing. They have not publicly identified suspects.

While living on the scenic Bay of Kotor, just down the Adriatic coast from Dubrovnik, Croatia, Ayvazyan and Terabelian appear to have remained in contact with another of their kids' aunts: Tamara Dadyan, who pleaded guilty to bank fraud and other crimes in the pandemic loan scam.

Dadyan, a former Encino real estate broker, vanished the day she was supposed to report to prison to start serving a sentence of 10 years and 10 months. She joined the fugitive couple two weeks later in Montenegro, where she too adopted a fake identity. Police arrested them a few weeks later.

Ayvazyan, 44, now locked up at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc, was sentenced in absentia to 17 years in prison for masterminding the scam to secure $18 million in emergency rescue loans to scores of sham businesses that his eight-person fraud ring set up in the San Fernando Valley in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Terabelian, 39, now a prison inmate in Victorville, got six years.

When federal agents and deputy marshals fetched the couple in February, Montenegrin police gave them a trove of personal possessions seized from the villa and the two apartments they rented nearby, including four Rolex watches and a collection of gold jewelry studded with diamonds and other gems.

Appraisers put the value at more than $164,000, according to the FBI. Prosecutors are seeking court permission to apply it to the more than $17 million in restitution the couple owes.

Montenegrin police also impounded two luxury cars that Ayvazyan shipped from California to Montenegro for their life on the lam: a 2015 Land Rover Range Rover now worth $33,000 and a 2015 BMW M3 sedan valued at $20,000, according to prosecutors. Montenegro has agreed to give them to the United States if Wilson consents to apply the cars to restitution too, prosecutors said in court papers.

The government has also seized a 2017 Range Rover that Ayvazyan left in California. Prosecutors say that one could yield nearly $60,000 for restitution.

Under the 2020 bail arrangements, Abelian put up $100,000 as her sister's personal surety. Abelian, 41, also provided collateral for another $175,000 in corporate bail bonds posted by both her sister and Ayvazyan, according to Wilson's ruling. The amount of collateral she put up was not publicly disclosed, but she lost that too under Wilson's ruling.

Prosecutors and the FBI opposed the request that Abelian filed in March to void the bail forfeiture judgment. Abelian provided no help in the international manhunt for her sister and Ayvazyan, FBI agent Justin Palmerton told Wilson in a court filing.

Abelian claimed she did not understand the fine print of the bail bond obligations because of the hectic rush to secure the couple's release after their October 2020 arrest at Miami International Airport on their way home from a Caribbean vacation. Wilson found that Abelian's status as an attorney who handles criminal cases "severely undermines her argument that she did not understand the consequences of a breach."

"Not only is Abelian an attorney, but fleeing the country when out on bail is the model example of a broken bond condition," Wilson wrote.

Abelian also argued that she has borne significant hardship from taking over as guardian for the three children, according to the judge's ruling. She also asserted the bond forfeiture had "caused her financial strain which affects the children's care and her livelihood," the judge said.

"But while the effect on the children may be substantial," Wilson wrote, "that is mainly the fault of defendants, who abandoned them and fled the law after committing serious financial crimes."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.