Thirty-three people have been indicted in a wide- ranging scam to sell more than $150 million in illegal pharmaceuticals in California and several other states, according to federal prosecutors.
Officials said Ara Karapedyan of Northridge, 45; Mihran Stepanyan of Glendale, 29; and Artur Stepanyan, 38, also of Glendale were central to the conspiracy, which involved the selling of illegally obtained drugs to a Minnesota company that sold the drugs wholesale.
David Miller, a 50-year-old Santa Ana resident and head of the Minnesota Independent Cooperative, bought approximately $157 million in drugs from the Stepanyans through various shell companies from 2010 to 2014, according to a statement released by the U.S. attorney for Northern California, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Miller was aware that the drugs he was getting from Karapedyan, the Stepanyans and other California sources had not been obtained legally, but he agreed to purchase and sell them anyway, prosecutors said in San Francisco Thursday, according to The Times. He also directed employees to doctor invoices to hide the fact that the drugs had not been obtained legally, they said.
The drugs included painkillers and other medications used to treat HIV or cancer, prosecutors said in comments reported by The Times.
Mihran Stepanyan is a Glendale resident who owns a North Hollywood company called Niva Pharmaceuticals. His cousin Artur also lives in Glendale, according to a copy of the indictment unsealed Thursday. Karapedyan, a Northridge resident who owns a North Hollywood pizzeria, allegedly supplied the Stepanyans with drugs and made several unlicensed street sales of painkillers and HIV drugs to other co-defendants, according to the indictment.
A separate indictment, unsealed Thursday in Ohio, charges Miller and the Stepanyans with procuring and selling illegal drugs there, prosecutors said. Karapedyan and another defendant, Gevork Ter-Mkrtchyan, were also charged in a murder-for-hire plot as part of the indictment.
—Staff and wire reports