Glendale Man Sentenced to 30 months in Federal Prison

Navasard Petrosyan, the owner of several Armenian-language publications based in Glendale, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy and false statements. The publications, which include Avangard Weekly, Kroonk Magazine, Muse Magazine, and Rainbow Magazine, were used by Petrosyan as fronts for a number of illegal financial transactions. Petrosyan, 61, had been negotiating checks from a variety of medical “consulting and management” businesses, and disguising them as advertising expenditures for his publications. He would then pass on to his clients the face value (in cash) of the checks, minus a fee of several percent. According to the plea agreement, Petrosyan conducted over $3 million in cash-back transactions illegally concealed as advertising expenditures. This resulted in a tax loss to the Internal Revenue Service of over $1 million. The investigation and prosecution of Petrosyan was carried out by the FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the Health and Human Services office in conjunction with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Stefan Slater