Court clerk in L.A. accused of revealing raids to gang members
A federal court employee in Los Angeles has been charged with leaking confidential court files, the FBI said Wednesday.
Nune Gevorkyan, 35, was accused of accessing sealed court documents and giving the information to defendants before they were arrested, officials said. Gevorkyan and her husband, Oganes Koshkaryan, were arrested Tuesday. They are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice.
Federal authorities said they believe Gevorkyan looked at sealed indictments before raids across Southern California in February 2011 that led to the arrests of more than 70 people associated with the Armenian Power gang. Most of the charges filed in those cases dealt with white-collar crimes.
One of the defendants, who is seeking a reduced sentence, told FBI agents that information about the takedown was known to some of those arrested.
“The cooperating defendant said that, as a result of this information, he/she fled his/her home the night before the arrests and stayed with family in another city,” according to court documents. The defendant later surrendered.
Officials said an individual “working in an undercover capacity approached Koshkaryan about getting leaked information from the court.”
“Following this conversation, on two separate occasions, the undercover provided Koshkaryan with the names of individuals who were actual defendants in a criminal case filed under seal in federal court. On both occasions, Koshkaryan then delivered to the undercover confidential information that had been obtained from the sealed court records,” according to a statement by the FBI.
“Checks of electronic court records confirmed that that Gevorkyan, who was employed as a clerk in the criminal intake area of the district court’s clerk’s office, had accessed the sealed court records pertaining to the named individuals shortly after the undercover had delivered the names to Koshkaryan,” the statement added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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