Competing members of Armenian-American organized crime groups have been charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, fraud, and more than $83 million in theft from Amazon (AMZN). Thirteen alleged members were arrested in California and Florida on Tuesday, including Ara Artuni and his archrival, Robert Amiryan, both of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
Allegations date back to at least 2021. The Department of Justice accused the Artuni Enterprise of cargo theft, by enrolling its associates as Amazon carriers who would get contracts for trucking routes — and then steal all or part of the shipment.
The DOJ also alleged the organization ran a “credit card bust-out” scheme, in which “they charged various credit cards to a sham business then drained the business account before the credit card companies could collect the to-be disputed funds.”
The Armenian mob is linked to the Russian mafia and is known as avtoritet, the Russian word for “authority.” A power struggle between Artuni and Amiryan had led to multiple foiled hit jobs, including a kidnapping and torture.
Armenian Organized Crime, a transnational syndicate, has made Los Angeles County a center of its U.S. operations. Since 2022, the two local leaders within avtoritet allegedly have engaged in a fight for control in their territory.
That included an attempt on Amiryan’s life in 2023 after associates of Amiryan “conspired with members of his own criminal organization to kidnap and torture one of Artuni’s associates in June 2023,” according to the DOJ.
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