ICE, FBI agents took bribes to provide ‘protection,’ cook books on immigration cases: Feds
Stephen Dinan
www.washingtontimes.com /news/2020/apr/29/ice-fbi-agents-took-bribes-provide-protection-cook/
A Los Angeles-area lawyer bribed agents from the FBI and ICE to provide “protection,” for him, with one scouring law enforcement databases to warn him of ongoing investigations, while the other cooked the books to help a client and a relative with immigration matters, according to a plea agreement filed in federal court this week.
Edgar Sargsyan, the 39-year-old lawyer, also admitted he and an accomplice also took out credit cards in the names of foreigners who’d come to the U.S. on travel visas, then charged hundreds of thousands of dollars to their accounts.
He agreed to plead guilty to five felony counts ranging from conspiracy to commit bank fraud to bribing a public official to lying to investigators.
Mr. Sargsyan said he paid nearly $240,000 to the agents, who were not named in the plea agreement.
But authorities last week charged former FBI Agent Babak Broumand with conspiracy to commit bribery, accusing him of accepting cash and gifts from a Los Angeles-area lawyer. The details of the two cases appear to match up — particularly the allegation that Mr. Sargsyan paid $36,000 at a Ducati dealership for a motorcycle and accessories for the FBI agent. The same purchase shows up in the criminal information filed against Mr. Broumand.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Mr. Sargsyan worked with Lev Aslan Dermen, whom they described as a “reputed organized crime figure.”
The FBI agent was paid up to $10,000 a month, treated to lavish hotel stays and the Ducati motorcycle to scour federal law enforcement databases and spot ongoing investigations. He would then warn Mr. Sargsyan to “stay away” from certain people.
Mr. Sargsyan says the HSI agent was paid at least $77,000 to scour databases in order to help the lawyer’s associates.
In one case a German client wanted to enter the U.S. but had a past drug conviction. According to the plea agreement, the HSI agent ran the name through Homeland Security’s chief law enforcement database, spotted the drug flag and removed the alert, easing the German’s ability to get into the U.S.
That act earned the HSI agent $30,000, Mr. Sargsyan said in the court filing.
The HSI agent also wrote out a formal order paroling one of Mr. Sargsyan’s Armenian relatives into the U.S., and got his supervisor to sign off, Mr. Sargsyan says. The attempt still failed, and the relative instead showed up at the border and demanded asylum. |
