An FBI agent was found guilty of sharing confidential information about the agency's investigations in exchange for cash payments and other bribes.
Pulled over in Burbank for driving without license plates, the man in the black Cadillac Escalade offered the police an explanation: The FBI used the car for official business.
Sargsyan, who has pleaded guilty to bribing Broumand and another federal agent, lying to federal authorities and defrauding banks, testified at the trial in hopes of getting a reduced sentence. Well before meeting Broumand, Sargsyan had surrounded himself with law enforcement officials to shield him from investigations that were something of an occupational hazard. A prolific criminal, he was not just committing credit card scams; he testified that he oversaw a company that laundered millions of dollars in profits from a biofuel fraud and was also growing marijuana on an industrial scale.
Broumand told jurors that he considered Sargsyan a “contact,” or informal source, who was providing information about matters of national security that were relevant to his work as an agent. “Generally,” he said, “I’m interested in heads of state, scientists, people who are movers and shakers in their respective countries.”
Sargsyan picked up Broumand outside the FBI building in Los Angeles in his Bentley. Broumand called Kusin later that day and said his source wasn’t willing to meet, Kusin testified. Broumand testified that he’d gone to the bar to try to cultivate Termendzhyan as an intelligence source. He’d seen photographs of Termendzhyan with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And according to what Sargsyan was telling him, “It seemed like he was involved with getting oil from ISIS,” Broumand testified. “Either selling it to ISIS or purchasing it from ISIS.
When Sargsyan’s Demerol supply — provided by a dentist he didn’t name — dried up, he turned to Broumand, who said he would ask a DEA agent with access to prescription drugs, according to Sargsyan. Needing a cover story, Sargsyan said he pushed Broumand to register him as an official FBI source. In text messages, they referred to this as the “marriage certificate.”
In 2016, Sargsyan threw a lavish party at the Grand Havana Room to celebrate being admitted to the state bar. This too was a fraud: On the eve of Broumand’s trial, Sargsyan disclosed he’d actually paid a partner at his firm, Henrik Mosesi, about $140,000 to take the exam on his behalf. He said he’d given Mosesi a false ID and instructed him to smear his fingerprint to fool the test’s biometric safeguards.
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