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Russian Or Armenian Mob Used "Model Employee" Con At PCH Arco

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  • Russian Or Armenian Mob Used "Model Employee" Con At PCH Arco

    RUSSIAN OR ARMENIAN MOB USED "MODEL EMPLOYEE" CON AT PCH ARCO
    By Paul Teetor

    LA Weekly
    http://www.laweekly.com/2009-06-18/news/russian-o r-armenian-mob-used-quot-model-employee-quot-con-a t-pch-arco/
    June 18 2009
    CA

    Redondo police search for the elusive "Erick" -- and $300,000

    The elusive "Erick"An organized-crime ring that police believe is
    Russian or Armenian targeted a high-volume Redondo Beach Arco gas
    station, assigned a low-level soldier to infiltrate it and waited eight
    months while he worked himself into a position where he could implant a
    tiny, high-tech "skimmer" to steal customers' credit-card information.

    Armed with a fresh batch of personal-information numbers, the gang
    began draining thousands of Southern California bank accounts soon
    after "Erick," the model employee who was by then entrusted with
    opening the station every day at 5 a.m., vanished in late April
    along with 1,500 packs of cigarettes, $1,000, a laptop, his employee
    application form -- and the two digital video recorders used for
    surveillance.

    Because the Arco is at a prime location at the bustling corner of
    Pacific Coast Highway and Prospect Avenue, the skimmer scam left a
    string of more than 1,000 victims, stretching from Santa Barbara to
    Newport Beach.

    The "model employee" con represents an elite level of criminal
    sophistication in its planning, patience and execution, police say,
    which is now appearing in the South Bay and Los Angeles.

    "This was an organized-crime ring that knew exactly what they were
    doing and very carefully lay in wait before they finally struck,"
    Redondo Police Department detective Mike Strosnider, heading the
    investigation, tells L.A. Weekly. "This has been done before in other
    places around the world. . It's just never been done in our city."

    The Redondo police investigation began in mid-May after a torrent
    of complaints from customers, including an undisclosed number of
    ripped-off Redondo police officers, whose bank accounts had been
    drained with a series of withdrawals of about $300 to $500. The
    victims proved to have one common denominator: They all bought gas
    at the busy Arco on PCH.

    The investigation is now focused on tracking down and arresting the
    man who called himself Erick Volonski, and taking down the global
    gang that planned and executed the scam and used him as its financial
    Trojan horse.

    Luckily, the detective says, the Redondo Police Department has a photo
    of Erick, who is now wanted for robbery and ATM fraud. That single,
    slightly blurred photo exists only because of an extraordinary piece
    of luck that, in hindsight, seems like a red flag that something
    about Erick was amiss.

    The picture was taken in February by a photographer for an
    architectural firm, who was shooting the station in preparation for
    a major Arco makeover. When Erick realized he had been photographed,
    he instantly became agitated and rushed into the office to ask manager
    John Wartanian to have the digital photo deleted.

    Wartanian was surprised and irritated by the request.

    "I finally asked the photographer to do it, just to make Erick happy,
    and he said to tell Erick he had deleted it, but he didn't do it,"
    Wartanian tells the Weekly. "So that's what I did. I told Erick it
    was deleted, even though it wasn't, and he stopped freaking out. . It
    seemed a little suspicious, but I let it go."

    The station's smog-check technician, Philip Malik, said he thought
    Erick's explanation that he didn't want girlfriends seeing his picture
    on the Internet was weak but semiplausible.

    "It seemed a little weird that he would be so upset about having
    his picture taken, but I didn't think anything like this could be
    happening," Malik says. "Maybe I should have realized he was into
    something criminal, but here at the station where he worked? I've
    never heard of anything like this happening . anywhere."

    When the story of the skimmer scam first broke in Los Angeles media
    outlets weeks ago, it was a 48-hour sensation on TV news. But employees
    at the Arco station said the first wave of mainstream media, during
    which the station was ringed with TV satellite trucks, sensationalized
    the case and buried the fact that, so far, all the victims have had
    their stolen money, now approaching $300,000, reimbursed by their
    respective banks.

    Nor did the first wave of media have time for the human-interest
    story behind the news: the betrayal of the kind of day-to-day work
    friendship that can quickly develop between employees at blue-collar,
    minimum-wage jobs, often held by young males from other countries
    with little or no family here and no fluency in English.

    "I thought of Erick as a friend," says Malik. "He was a sweetheart
    of a guy."

    Malik describes the tall, skinny Erick as a gentle, humble man who
    worked hard, asked a lot of questions but never talked about himself,
    did not appear to have a car and walked to work every day, never
    accepting a ride home and never using the station's phone.

    "But there were a couple of times I found him talking on his cell
    phone, whispering on the phone," Malik says. "He said it was his
    girlfriend . that she was in the hospital."

    Erick, he says, was a model employee and a good guy to be around.
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