LOS ANGELES — A federal court jury on Thursday convicted a Bay Area man who was an FBI special agent of conspiring to accept at least $150,000 in cash bribes from a lawyer with ties to Armenian organized crime, authorities said.
Lafayette resident Babek Broumand, 56, was convicted on two counts of bribery of a public official, one count of conspiracy and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada of the Central District of California said in a statement.
Evidence at the 11-day trial showed Broumand accepted cash, checks, private jet flights, a Ducati motorcycle, hotel stays, escorts, meals and other items of value from the organized crime lawyer, Estrada said.
He was remanded into federal custody and is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner on Jan. 30, 2023. He faces maximum sentences of 15 years in federal prison for each bribery count; 10 years for each unlawful money transactions count; and five years for each conspiracy count.
The jury found Broumand not guilty of one count of bribery of a public official and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.
According to Estrada, Broumand was an FBI special agent from January 1999 until search warrants were searched on his business and home in 2018. He was responsible for national security investigations from the FBI’s field office in San Francisco.
Estrada said that in return for the bribe payments, Broumand conducted law enforcement database inquiries and used them to help the organized crime lawyer and his associates avoid prosecution and monitoring. Authorities identified the lawyer only as E.S.
Broumand helped E.S. by informing him whether a particular person or entity was under criminal investigation, Estrada said. Broumand would tell E.S. to “stay away” from a person or that they were “OK,” according to Estrada.
To conceal their work, Estrada said Broumand made it appear as if E.S. was working as an FBI source. Broumand wrote reports after the fact to make it look as if he’d conducted legitimate law enforcement database inquiries, Estrada said.
E.S. paid Broumand at least $150,000 in cash and check bribes, as well as other accessories valued at more than $36,000, Estrada said. The bribes were deposited into the accounts for Love Bugs LLC, a Lafayette-based lice-removal hair salon business that Broumand and his wife started in 2007.
At one point early in the scheme, according to Estrada, E.S. asked Broumand to query the FBI database for Levon Termendzhyan, an Armenian organized crime figure for whom E.S. had worked. The database search revealed an FBI investigation in Los Angeles.
Estrada said court documents showed Broumand accessed the FBI case file on Termendzhyan repeatedly in January 2015 and again in May 2016.
A federal jury in Utah found Termendzhyan guilty in March 2020 on criminal charges related to a $1 billion renewable fuel tax credit fraud scheme, Estrada said. He still awaits sentencing on those charges.
Broumand also interfered with an FBI investigation into Felix Cisneros Jr., a corrupt special agent with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations. Cisneros also had ties to Termendzhyan. Cisneros was convicted at trial in 2018 for his corrupt acts with Termendzhyan and again earlier this year for his corrupt acts with E.S., Estrada said.
Cisneros is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 17.
Source: www.mercurynews.com