Former FBI Agent From East Bay Convicted Of Accepting Bribes

EAST BAY, CA — An East Bay man who used to work as an FBI special agent was found guilty Tuesday by a federal jury of conspiring to accept at least $150,000 in cash bribes and other items of value in exchange for providing sensitive law enforcement information to a corrupt lawyer with ties to Armenian organized crime, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Babak Broumand, 56, of Lafayette, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, two counts of bribery of a public official, and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

Broumand, an FBI special agent from January 1999 until shortly after search warrants were served on his home and businesses in 2018, was responsible for national security investigations and was assigned to the FBI Field Office in San Francisco.

According to evidence presented at his 11-day trial, from January 2015 to December 2018, Broumand accepted cash, checks, private jet flights, a Ducati motorcycle, hotel stays, escorts, meals, and other items of value from an organized crime-linked lawyer—identified in court papers as “E.S” and each man acted to conceal the true nature of their corrupt relationship.

In return for the bribe payments and other items of value, evidence revealed Broumand conducted law enforcement database inquiries and used those inquiries to help E.S. and his associates avoid prosecution and law enforcement monitoring. Specifically, prosecutors said, Broumand informed E.S. whether a particular person or entity was under criminal investigation by stating that E.S. should "stay away" from that person or that they were "OK."

To conceal the nature of their corrupt relationship, prosecutors said, Broumand made it falsely appear that E.S. was working as an FBI source. Broumand wrote reports after the fact to make it falsely appear that he conducted legitimate law enforcement database inquiries.

In exchange for the illegal inquiries, E.S. paid Broumand at least $150,000 in cash and check bribes, including a Ducati motorcycle and accessories valued at more than $36,000, the prosecution said. The bribes were deposited into the accounts for Love Bugs LLC, a Lafayette-based lice-removal hair salon business that Broumand and his wife started in 2007.

Soon after the bribery scheme began, E.S. asked Broumand to query the FBI database for Levon Termendzhyan, an Armenian organized crime figure for whom E.S. had worked. The database search "rang all the bells" and revealed an FBI investigation in Los Angeles, according to court documents, which note that Broumand accessed the FBI case file on Termendzhyan repeatedly in January 2015.

It is also alleged that Broumand accessed the Termendzhyan FBI case file in May 2016.
Termendzhyan, a.k.a. “Lev Aslan Dermen,” was found guilty in March 2020 in federal court in Utah on criminal charges related to a $1 billion renewable fuel tax credit fraud scheme. He awaits sentencing.

In December 2015, at E.S.’s request, Broumand searched a confidential FBI database for information about Sam Sarkis Solakyan, a medical imaging companies CEO, and later warned E.S. to “stay away” from Solakyan, who was “trouble,” meaning that Solakyan was under law enforcement investigation, the prosecution said. Solakyan eventually was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to five years in federal prison for running a scheme that submitted more than $250 million fraudulent claims through California’s workers compensation system.

In May 2016, prosecutors said, Broumand interfered with an FBI investigation into Felix Cisneros Jr., a corrupt special agent with Homeland Security Investigations who also had ties to Termendzhyan. Cisneros was convicted at trial in two different cases. The first trial, in 2018, resulted from Cisneros’s corrupt acts for Termendzhyan. The second trial, earlier this year, resulted from Cisneros’ corrupt acts for E.S. Cisneros is scheduled for sentencing on October 17.

The FBI, the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter and were assisted at trial by the Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General.

“Broumand conspired with the very types of criminals he was trusted to investigate," said Zachary Shroyer, special agent in charge of the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Los Angeles Field Office. "Today’s guilty verdict sends a clear message that no one is above the law, and any Department of Justice employee who participates in these types of schemes will be brought to justice."

The jury Tuesday also found Broumand not guilty of one count of bribery of a public official and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

Broumand was taken into federal custody and is scheduled to attend a sentencing hearing Jan. 30. He faces the statutory maximum sentences of 15 years in federal prison for each bribery count, 10 years in federal prison for each unlawful monetary transactions count, and five years in federal prison for the conspiracy count.

“The conviction of Mr. Broumand, a veteran FBI agent who chose greed over integrity and turned his back on the oath he swore to uphold, is proof that the FBI will root out corruption of any kind, to include veteran agents within its ranks,” said Don Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office. “This prosecution was the result of hard work by multiple partner agencies to work through the painful truth of having to investigate one of its own.”