Los Angeles Times

Fugitive couple who helped run $18 million COVID relief fraud ring get years in prison

LOS ANGELES — When convicted Tarzana swindlers Richard Ayvazyan and Marietta Terabelian sliced off their electronic monitoring bracelets and vanished in August, the couple left a note for the three teenage children they abandoned.

"We will be together again one day," they wrote. "This is not a goodbye but a brief break from each other."

Perhaps not so brief.

Ayvazyan, 43, was sentenced in absentia on Monday to 17 years in prison for leading a fraud ring that stole $18 million in a lurid scam to secure emergency pandemic loans that were supposed to go to small businesses upended by

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