/By AzerNews/

By Mushvig Mehdiyev

The United States police arrested a number of ethnic Armenians after it was found that they participated in a grand scam enterprise involving over $150 million of illegal and counterfeit pharmaceuticals in California and several other American states, according to federal prosecutors in San Francisco.

A report by The Los Angeles Times citing federal officials, said Armenian-cum residents Ara Karapedyan, Mihran Stepanyan, and Artur Stepanyan were the masterminds behind the conspiracy - it involves the sale of illegally obtained drugs to a drug wholesaler in Minnesota. Prosecutors claimed that the drugs included painkillers and other medications used to treat HIV and cancer.

The prosecutors convicted Karapedyan and another Armenian defendant, Gevork Ter-Mkrtchyan also on murder-for-hire charges. The pair reportedly attempted to hire a hitman to annihilate an unidentified individual that angered Ter-Mkrtchyan, the prosecutors said.

"Although they paid $1,500 for the execution, it did not actually take place," the prosecutors added.

The criminal involvements of Armenians in the U.S. territory is notorious enough thanks to the most famous gang, named Armenian Power. The criminal scandal linked to the arrest of Armenian Power was widely publicized in 2011 when the FBI carried out a wide-range arrest of the gang members.

In 2011, after years of surveillance, wiretaps and the testimonies of kidnapped and extortion victims, about 90 Armenian Power members and their associates were federally indicted, and dozens more were arrested, the Los Angeles Weekly reported.

Official announcements have later on revealed that these gun-toting defendants drove flashy BMWs and Porsches and were connected to elaborate schemes in bank fraud, identity theft and other highly sophisticated white-collar crimes. As a whole, the syndicate is estimated to have cost victims at least $20 million.

The illegal and violent behavior of Armenians have once severely angered American nationals in Glendale, California. The locals claimed that those Armenian gangs have sewn fear in the public via its reckless behavior against the population in Glendale.