Drug Ring Sting Nets O.C. Prosecutor

An Orange County deputy district attorney was charged with conspiracy Monday after federal authorities said he divulged information to a key suspect about the investigation of an alleged drug ring that made and distributed methamphetamine.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan Ray Kazarian, 35, of Aliso Viejo, a former member of the district attorney’s gang prosecution unit, is the first county prosecutor in 30 years or more to be charged with a felony, said Tori Richards, spokeswoman for the county prosecutor’s office.

“This painful and unfortunate incident should not in any way be taken as a reflection on the more than 1,200 honest, hard-working men and women of Orange County’s district attorney’s office,” Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Rackauckas said during an afternoon media conference Monday.

Rackauckas said his office cooperated with the multi-agency investigation led by the FBI after learning in January that Kazarian was a suspect.

Federal prosecutors Monday also charged 10 other alleged drug ring members with distributing cocaine and prescription drugs and laundering money.

Among the defendants are the alleged leader, John David Ward, 28, of Orange, and Howard Irvine Coones, 44, of Garden Grove, founder and president of the Orange County chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle club.

Kazarian is charged only in connection with the methamphetamine conspiracy. He was arrested Sunday at his Aliso Viejo home.

Federal prosecutors said investigators caught Kazarian with the help of a phony search warrant earlier this month.

The warrant was issued in connection with Ward’s alleged activities and named a confidential informant, who didn’t exist. Investigators, intercepting telephone conversations, later caught Kazarian passing the warrant information on to Ward, U.S. Atty. Alejandro Mayorkas said.

“I can’t say what that would have meant to the life of that informant if he did exist,” Mayorkas said during a news conference in Santa Ana.

Finding a local prosecutor involved in a drug ring is “extraordinary,” he said. But “it is still very disappointing to law enforcement,” he added.

A haggard-looking Kazarian, dressed in jail clothing, appeared in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on Monday afternoon along with the other defendants. His family members, including his parents and his wife, who is nearly nine months pregnant, attended and gestured their support. The family members declined to talk to reporters.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato denied Kazarian bail and set his arraignment for June 21.

Arguing that Kazarian is a flight risk, Assistant U.S. Atty. James Spertus cited a taped telephone conversation in which Kazarian and Ward allegedly discuss fleeing to Cuba and Costa Rica, respectively, should their activities be uncovered.

Spertus said federal authorities are launching an investigation into Kazarian’s financial holdings. He earned $89,000 a year, Richards said.

Kazarian’s attorney, Malcolm Guleserian of Westminster, argued in court that there is no evidence to support the prosecution’s claims.

“He’s done more to make this community safe than anybody in this room,” Guleserian said.

On Monday, those who knew Kazarian, including some defense attorneys who have faced him in the courtroom, described him as an aggressive and meticulous prosecutor.

Many expressed shock that the hard-nosed prosecutor now stands accused of being the type of person he worked so hard to get behind bars.

“He’s a very good lawyer, tenacious,” said criminal defense attorney Julian Bailey of Orange. “It’s a shock to everyone. We just hope it’s not true.”

Kazarian handled a wide range of cases in the six years he’s been with the department. In 1997, he prosecuted a high school football coach who was found guilty of molesting two former students. Earlier this year, he won long prison terms against four Los Angeles gang members after they were found guilty in a string of jewelry store robberies.

In a recent interview, Kazarian, who attended Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, listed his greatest professional accomplishment as being promoted to the gang unit.

“Don’t do the job unless you can do it competently and thoroughly,” he told the Daily Pilot last fall.

Police officers who worked with him said Kazarian often lived up to his motto. “He really wanted to go out there and prosecute these gang members,” said one officer who worked with Kazarian for several years. “He hammered them hard.”

Rackauckas said he was told of the investigation in January. He said he moved Kazarian in March from the Target Gang Team at the Costa Mesa Police Department to a job inside the office so the deputy “could be more efficiently monitored.” The move was done as part of a routine rotation to avoid raising Kazarian’s suspicions, he said.

According to a court affidavit filed in the case, Kazarian complained about the transfer to Ward during a telephone conversation. It is “first-year D.A. grunt work,” Kazarian allegedly said.

The affidavit accuses Kazarian of passing on sensitive information to Ward on different occasions and even lobbying for him in an Idaho case last year when Ward faced cocaine trafficking charges. Kazarian wrote a glowing letter to a judge saying he had known Ward for eight years and vouching for his character.

A fellow Orange County prosecutor, Jeff Ferguson, alerted federal authorities about the letter last year. “It makes it all the more painful because it is one of our own,” Ferguson said from his home Monday evening.

The government charges that Kazarian used his position recently to obtain information on an investigation of a fellow drug-ring defendant, Peter Tristan Perry, 29, of Anaheim, who was arrested Sunday. Anaheim police allegedly found 106 pounds of ephedrine--a raw material used in the production of methamphetamine--in Perry’s house last year.

Federal prosecutors said that Perry is an associate of Ward’s and that Kazarian, who was responsible for filing charges against Perry, was passing information to Ward.

Mayorkas said the ring allegedly transported ephedrine from New Jersey to Southern California, where 14 labs created methamphetamine. From there, the drug was shipped inside Harley-Davidson motorcycles and their crates to Hawaii and distributed there and elsewhere, he said.

Federal authorities would not provide more details, saying the 2-year-old investigation is ongoing.

Other defendants are: Anastacia Boren, 29, of Anaheim; Ward’s parents, Steven Donald Ward, 52, and Frances Dianne Ward, 51, also of Anaheim; Jose Arturo Arriola, 28, of Whittier; Richard Correa, 27, of Downey; Javier Lyva Rocha, 29, of Burbank; and Frank Muraca, 28, who turned himself in.

Each defendant faces a maximum of life in prison.

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Times staff writer Jeff Gottlieb and correspondent Jason Kandel contributed to this report.