6 Charged in Police Crackdown on Cloned Cellular Phones : Glendale: West L.A. shop owner and manager plus four others face laundry list of charges. The acts cost two telephone companies an estimated $150,000, police say.

Law enforcement authorities continued their crackdown on the “crime of the future” by filing a laundry list of charges Friday against the owner and manager of a West Los Angeles electronics shop and four others for allegedly possessing “cloned” cellular telephones, police said.

Abner Pajounia, 31, and Davoud Hassis Yashoron, 60, both of Los Angeles, were charged with many felony counts Friday following their arrest last month during a sting operation at Master Mobile Sound that yielded more than 100 illegally “cloned” phones and the computer equipment needed to make them, authorities said.

The acts allegedly committed by Pajounia, the owner of the electronics shop, and his father-in-law Yashoron, the store’s manager, cost the L.A. Cellular and AirTouch Cellular phone companies an estimated $150,000, Glendale Police Detective Mario Yagoda said.

Authorities said the case is just the tip of a growing iceberg.

“It’s the crime of the future,” said Yagoda of cellular phone fraud. “It’s an ongoing problem and it’s costing the cellular phone industry $300 million a year.”

Cellular phone fraud typically involves “cloning,” a process in which a thief steals the electronic serial number of a legitimate customer’s cellular phone and programs it into a computer chip, which produces a “clone” or perfect duplicate of that customer’s phone number.

The cloned phone may then be used to place calls that will be illegally charged to the phone owned by the unsuspecting customer whose number was duplicated.

Glendale Police Detective Charles Follett said most cloned phone numbers usually are used only about a month, until the legitimate customers receive the bills showing they are being charged for calls they never placed.

Others named in the complaint include Soombat Khachatourian, 54, of Burbank, Malissa Beth Schartoff, 21, of North Hollywood, Ronald Martin, 49, of Carson, and Babak Nassimizadeh, 28, of Los Angeles, who along with Pajounia and Yashoron face a count each of sale or possession of an instrument to defraud a telephone company, authorities said.

Khachatourian was a private contractor performing work at the business and the others were customers who came into the shop while authorities served a search warrant, Yagoda said.

“They were customers coming in with cloned cellular phones, wanting them to be re-cloned,” Yagoda said. “They just wandered in on the wrong day at the wrong time.”

Pajounia was also charged with possession and manufacture of telecommunication devices with the intent to avoid payment and Yashoron with a single count of possession of the devices, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. William D. Clark.

Each man was also charged with obtaining telephone services by fraud with the intent to defraud L.A. Cellular and AirTouch Cellular. Pajounia faces additional charges of using a device to defraud the two cellular carriers, receiving stolen property and sale or receipt of an access card to defraud.

If convicted of the charges, Pajounia faces a maximum state prison term of seven years and eight months, Yashoron faces five years and eight months and the others face three years each, Clark said.

The six defendants, now free on bail, are scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.

Yagoda said he and other investigators must now sift through “hundreds and hundreds” of phone numbers seized when a search warrant was served Oct. 14 at the shop.

“We strongly believe there are many, many people involved with cellular fraud associated with Master Mobile Sound,” Yagoda said.