VALLEY LINK IN WEAPONS SALES FEDS SAY RING SMUGGLED ARMS.Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer Members of a Russian-Armenian organized crime ring, including six suspects from the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. , have been charged with plotting to smuggle smug·gle v. smug·gled, smug·gling, smug·gles v.tr. 1. To import or export without paying lawful customs charges or duties. 2. To bring in or take out illicitly or by stealth. $2.5 million in black-market military weapons into the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , federal officials said Tuesday. The suspects sold the weapons - including rocket-propelled grenade RPG, or rocket-propelled grenade is a loose term describing hand-held, shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons capable of firing an unguided rocket equipped with an explosive warhead. launchers, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles This is a list of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Radar-guided SAMs
Although the weapons are of the type that homeland-security experts fear could be used by terrorists, officials said the suspects were smuggling smuggling, illegal transport across state or national boundaries of goods or persons liable to customs or to prohibition. Smuggling has been carried on in nearly all nations and has occasionally been adopted as an instrument of national policy, as by Great Britain the arms for profit. ``They didn't care who they were selling to,'' said Paul Browne, a spokesman for New York Police New York Police may refer to:
Browne said the investigation into the weapons operation began about a year ago as part of a probe into medical-insurance and credit-card fraud schemes being run by an organized crime syndicate. Using wiretaps on seven phones and intercepting 15,000 conversations, investigators tracked the suspects to South Africa, Armenia and the Georgian Republic, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The two accused of being ringleaders - Artur Solomonyan, an Armenian, and Christiaan Dewet Spies, a South African, both living illegally in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of - and 15 other suspects were arrested Monday night and Tuesday morning in roundups in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , Los Angeles and Miami, officials said. Among those arrested were Garegin Gasparyan, 28, of Burbank; Tigran Gevorgyan, 21, of Glendale; William Thomas, of Los Angeles; Artur Solomonyan, 26, who has homes in New York and Van Nuys; and Solomonyan's brother Levon, 24. Police still were searching for Armand Abramian, 27, of Glendale. According to the criminal complaint, the smuggling ring sold the informant eight illegal weapons - most of them military assault rifles, including two AK-47s and an Israeli-made Uzi machine gun. The dealers delivered three of the guns in New York City, three in Los Angeles and two in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. In recent weeks the suspects made a $2.5 million deal to sell the informant more powerful weapons, mainly Russian-made, officials said. The suspects were accused of giving the informant photographs of the weapons and saying they were holding them somewhere in Eastern Europe and were ready to get them shipped to the United States. The photographs of the weapons were displayed at a news conference held Monday in New York City. Los Angeles Police Department "LAPD" and "L.A.P.D." redirect here. For other uses, see LAPD (disambiguation).  This article or section is written like an . officers say they have noticed a spike in Russian-Armenian organized crime, especially in medical-insurance and credit-card fraud, but not in military weapons. ``We've never had this type of case in Los Angeles,'' said Cmdr. Mark Leap, the second in command in the LAPD's Critical Incident Management Bureau. ``It's certainly a concern that people would sell these types of weapons strictly for profit, and they don't care who they sell them to. That's one of the challenges of law enforcement - to uncover these kinds of conspiracies and make sure the weapons don't fall into the hands of terrorists.'' Jason Kandel, (818) 713-3664 jason.kandel(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1) Federal officials say this photo of anti-tank guns was shown to an FBI informant to advertise some of the weapons a Russian-Armenian crime ring could smuggle into the United States. (2) In New York, handcuffed Vatro Machitidze is led away Tuesday by federal agents as a suspect in a major weapons-smuggling ring. In the San Fernando Valley, five men were arrested and a sixth was being sought in the case. Louis Lanzano/Associated Press |
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