Five people connected to fraudulent schemes involving mail and identity theft in Glendale were taken into custody Thursday following the execution of search warrants.
Detectives assigned to the Financial Crimes Unit arrested 36-year-old Razmik Barseghyan, 27-year-old Robert Poghosyan, 35-year-old Vahan Kalashyan, 26-year-old Armen Harutyunyan and 27-year-old Artyom Militonyan Thursday after numerous search warrants were executed at a multi-unit apartment complex in the 500 block of West Colorado Street, according to the Glendale Police Department.
All five suspects were booked at the Glendale Police Jail on suspicion of various charges, including fraud, identity theft and burglary-related offenses, police said.
During their investigation, detectives learned that the suspects were accessing and removing mail from multiple apartment mailboxes belonging to other residents.
The suspects were believed to have been using other individuals’ personal identifying information to fraudulently obtain credit cards, allegedly tampering with mailbox keyholes and replacing them with “dummy” keyholes, allowing them to gain unauthorized access to the mailboxes, police said.
A large amount of personal identifying information belonging to other individuals was located during the execution of the search warrants, along with credit card re-encoding devices, cash, gold and multiple credit cards.
“The evidence recovered is being examined as detectives work to determine the full scope of the fraudulent activity,” the department said in a statement.
Police said detectives were continuing to identify additional victims whose information may have been used for fraudulent credit card activity, noting that the case is expected to be presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for formal filing consideration.
Anyone with information regarding the case was urged to contact the Glendale Police Department’s Financial Crimes Unit at 818-548-4840.