LA Magazine.. another one you literally couldn’t make up…
Armenian organized crime figure Edgar Sargysan, who ran a bogus law firm on Rodeo Drive connected to a slew of politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, is no longer a lawyer but the attorney who took the Bar exam for him with a fake ID is..
Edgar Sargsyan, a private jet-flying career conman turned confidential informant who admitted in court testimony nearly two years ago that he paid a ringer to take the California bar exam for him, has been disbarred.
But Henrik Mosesian Mosesi, the attorney Sargsyan testified was paid $20,000 a month to study for the test and was rewarded with a Rolex when he passed it, is still a licensed lawyer with a Glendale-based practice. Mosesi, according to court records and Sargsyan’s testimony during the 2022 trial of Babak Broumand, a former FBI agent convicted of corruption and bribery, used a fake ID and smudged fingerprints at a Sacramento testing site in February 2015 to pass the grueling exam for Sargsyan.
Mosesi, when called as a witness in Broumand’s trial, pleaded the 5th Amendment, which got the attention of California State Bar officials. But he continues to operate a law practice despite the alarming allegations leveled at him by Sargysan from the stand.
The real attorney, and the fake one, once ran the now-shuttered Beverly Hills-based Pillar Law Group on Rodeo Drive, where the walls were festooned with selfies of Sargsyan with prominent politicians, including former President Barack Obama and California Governor Gavin Newsom. According to Sargsyan’s testimony, the office was where he ran a labyrinthine identity theft scam, laundering some of his scheme’s proceeds with political campaign donations – and paying Mosesi to study.
Edgar Sargsyan with former President Barack Obama. Sargsyan was disbarred nearly two years after he admitted he was never a lawyer at all.
Defense exhibit in trial of Babak Broumand
When the exam was passed, Sargsyan, Mosesi, and another lawyer in the defunct firm, Art Kalantar, attended a swearing-in ceremony in Sacramento and then later partied at the members-only Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hill, a spot where Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson, and a slew of other A-list Hollywood celebrities maintain private humidors, to celebrate his admission to the Bar.
In attendance at that 2016 celebration were the badges on the Armenian Mafia’s payroll: former FBI Agent Babak Broumand, former HSI agent Felix Cisneros, and former Glendale Detective John Balian. Sargsyan helped send all three men to federal prison after he agreed to testify against them in court. In fact, it was on the eve of Broumand’s trial when Sargsyan confessed to his handlers that he had not disclosed to them that he’d been practicing law without a valid license.
Read more
https://lamag.com/news/beverly-hills-lawyer-disbarred-two-years-after-confession
