Couple convicted in $18M pandemic relief fraud cut monitoring bracelets, flee

A Southern California couple are on the run from federal authorities after they sliced off their monitoring bracelets and fled while awaiting sentencing for the theft of millions of dollars in coronavirus pandemic relief funds, the FBI said late Tuesday.

Richard Ayvazyan, 43, and Marietta Terabelian, 37, were convicted in June of conspiring with family members to fraudulently secure at least $18 million in emergency relief money.

They created an elaborate web of fictitious San Fernando Valley businesses to secure loans under the Paycheck Protection and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs.

The FBI’s Los Angeles office said on Twitter that the two are now considered fugitives.

They were scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 4.

“They have international ties as well as local ties, but we’re not ruling anything out as to where they may have fled,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

Federal authorities believe they fled Sunday afternoon from a Tarzana house worth $3.25 million that they had bought with the loan money they stole, she said. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to launder money and related crimes.

Court records showed the couple used a number of L.A. shell companies set up with stolen identities and forged tax returns and fake payrolls to collect the taxpayer bailout money.

By August 2020, the group had applied for 151 loans to mainly sham businesses, some of them named after real ones.

On June 25, a federal jury in L.A. convicted Ayvazyan, Terabelian and two relatives of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to launder money and related crimes. Four accomplices pleaded guilty on theeveoftrial.