How Rising Prosecutor Became Defendant

It seemed an unlikely friendship: the tall prosecutor with a self-described penchant “for designer suits, ties and shoes,” and the T-shirt vendor with connections to the notorious Hells Angels motorcycle club who was facing nine years in an Idaho prison on drug charges.

But that relationship, federal investigators say, formed the undercurrent to a series of furtive lunch meetings, telephone calls and voicemail messages in which Bryan Ray Kazarian, described as “a rising star” in the Orange County district attorney’s office, slipped sensitive details of investigations to John David Ward, 28, the alleged linchpin of a $580,000-a-week drug and money-laundering operation.

If the charges hold, it would mean a rapid and irreversible fall for a six-year prosecutor described by colleagues as “gregarious” with an ebullient courtroom style, and who made his mark early by landing a high-profile assignment on the county’s gang unit.

“He had an excellent reputation as a prosecutor,” said a fellow deputy district attorney who asked not to be identified. “He is very aggressive, very creative, a red, white and blue kind of guy.”

Kazarian, 35, was one of 11 defendants charged Monday in connection with an alleged drug and money-laundering ring that prosecutors contend stretched from New Jersey to Hawaii.

Most of the defendants were arrested Sunday. The last suspect, Peter Siow, 38, of Anaheim Hills, was arrested at Burbank airport Monday evening after returning from a trip, Assistant U.S. Atty. James Spertus said. Siow was charged Tuesday with conspiring with Ward to launder money using Siow’s jewelry store, Classic Designs, in Glendale Galleria.

Among the defendants are Ward’s parents, Steve and Diane Ward of Orange, who also own at least three other Orange County homes in which their son and two other co-defendants lived. Voter registration records list the father’s occupation as a mechanic.

Kazarian’s father, Ray Kazarian of Fountain Valley, said his son, a civil litigator for two years before joining the prosecutor’s office in 1993, told him during a telephone call early Tuesday that the federal charges were baseless.

“ ‘Dad, everything is wrong,’ ” the elder Kazarian quoted his son as saying. “ ‘They patched up everything and made it sound real bad.’ ”

Bryan Kazarian’s attorney, Malcolm Guleserian, said Tuesday that Kazarian and Ward met through a mutual friend and had developed “an arm’s-length friendship.”

Lawyer Says Kazarian ‘Never Named Names’

Prosecutors contend that Kazarian leaked internal information about investigations of Ward’s alleged colleagues, including tipping off Ward to the supposed existence of a confidential informant. The informant was fictitious, made up by investigators to see whether Kazarian would pass the information along.

Guleserian, though, argued that Kazarian believed Ward to be a legitimate businessman for whom he might work in the future, and for whom he simply confirmed a detail that was contained in public court files.

“What they are trying to imply is that he had given” Ward the name of a confidential informant, Guleserian said. “Nobody was named.”

Guleserian said Ward bragged about his relationship with Kazarian, implying to the friends and associates that he could get them off if they ever got into trouble.

“What troubles the government the most is that this guy Ward would call all his friends and prop them up by saying ‘I’ve got somebody in the inside,’ ” Guleserian said. Ward “took advantage of him and [Kazarian] feels terrible about this. He is completely devastated.”

Spertus declined comment.

Guleserian said Kazarian may have shown poor judgment by discussing a criminal case with Ward, and could have simply refused to talk about it. But Kazarian thought he was just helping an inquiring friend with some innocuous information, he said.

“He could’ve, should’ve, would’ve, but this is a wild leap into speculation that somehow now he is involved in a conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine,” Guleserian said.

It was not immediately clear how Kazarian and Ward met. But Kazarian wrote in a letter last year to an Idaho judge that he had known Ward for about eight years.

That letter started a series of events that led to Sunday’s arrest.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Ferguson, assigned to the Narcotics Enforcement Team, said he was called by authorities in Blaine County, Idaho, early last year seeking information about Ward.

Help for Drug Dealer Stunned Colleague

Ward came to authorities’ attention in 1996, when Federal Express security officers found 170 grams of cocaine in two packages sent to Idaho. They connected the packages to Ward, Idaho police said, and the subsequent police investigation led to Anaheim, where Ward was living.

“It wasn’t kilos, but we argued he wasn’t some small-time drug dealer,” said Douglas Werth, the Blaine County prosecutor who handled Ward’s case.

In January 1998, Ward pleaded guilty to one felony count of distributing cocaine, and was later sentenced to nine years in state prison. He was released on bond pending an appeal that is still wending its way through the Idaho courts.

In May 1998, Ferguson said Idaho authorities called to tell him that one of his colleagues--Kazarian--had written to the judge presiding over Ward’s case. The letter described Ward as an “incredibly honest and straightforward individual, and that [his] word is as good as gold,” according to the affidavit.

“I was stunned. I’ve never seen anything like this in 10 years of prosecuting cases,” Werth said.

Ferguson said Kazarian’s letter was intended to gain leniency for Ward, who was free on bail and facing sentencing after pleading guilty to the charges.

Guleserian said Kazarian wrote the letter not out of friendship, but to avoid being subpoenaed by Ward’s Idaho lawyer to testify as a character witness. Guleserian said Kazarian discussed the letter with a supervisor, who told him it was a bad idea but did not prohibit him from writing it.

Orange County prosecutor Bryan Brown, Kazarian’s supervisor at the time, denied he knew of the letter until it was brought to his attention sometime last summer by Anaheim police detectives investigating Ward as part of the federal probe, said district attorney spokeswoman Tori Richards.

After learning of the letter, Ferguson said, he discussed it with his own supervisors and they decided to turn it over to federal investigators, who already were looking into Ward’s activities in Orange County.

Ward’s neighbors in an upscale, gated community in the city of Orange were also suspicious of the 28-year-old man, who drove luxury cars and bought expensive home appliances like flat-screen televisions, ostensibly with the profits from a T-shirt printing business.

“It just didn’t add up,” said one neighbor. “His Ferarris, Mercedes and Porsches turned a lot of heads.”

At one point, Anastacia Boren, Ward’s girlfriend and mother of his young son, also lived with him in the house. Boren, who is also a defendant in the conspiracy case, has since moved into a house in Anaheim owned by Ward’s parents, according to the affidavit.

Ward, a high school dropout who grew up in Orange, also boasted of ties to professional baseball players and auto racers, neighbors said.

The neighbor, who said Ward was generous and friendly, occasionally let him take her 14-year-old son golfing and to Angel games.

Ward’s expensive cars were magnets for neighborhood children, who crowded into his garage on weekends to check out his latest purchase and to receive gifts, such as mountain bikes, BUM jackets and T-shirts.

“He was always giving stuff away. He was a pretty nice guy,” said one teenager who lives on the same street. “We all just thought he was some rich guy.”

According to the federal affidavit, Ward was the central figure in a multifaceted illicit business that traded in cocaine and prescription drugs such as Percodan and Dilaudid, a fallback for heroin addicts.

But the core of the business, the affidavit said, was running an assembly line that allegedly made $580,000 a week by converting ephedrine stolen in New Jersey into “ice”--a form of methamphetamines--which was then packed in Harley-Davidson motorcycles and packing crates and shipped to dealers in Hawaii.

Millions Allegedly Lost, Laundered in Las Vegas

Las Vegas casinos were the indirect beneficiaries of some of the proceeds, according to the federal affidavit. Ward lost more than $2 million in Vegas casinos last year alone, the affidavit said. Authorities also believe Ward laundered some of his drug proceeds in Vegas.

“I can’t believe all this is going down,” said Matt Hoopaugh, a close friend of John Ward’s now living in Austin, Texas.

Hoopaugh was the subject of another bit of information-gathering that federal investigators allege Kazarian did on Ward’s behalf. According to the affidavit, Ward told Kazarian that Hoopaugh wanted to move back to Orange County but thought there was an old warrant out for his arrest. Ward asked Kazarian if he could intercede, although in wiretap transcripts detailed in the affidavit, Kazarian said he could find no record of a warrant.

Hoopaugh, who said he used to be addicted to methamphetamine, said he knows nothing about that conversation and has no connection to Ward’s alleged drug operation.

“I’m clean,” he said. “I came here to get away from all that.”

*

Times staff writers Michael Luo and Jean O. Pasco contributed to this report.