A man from California’s San Gabriel Valley was convicted Friday of two murder-for-hire plots, one against a former lawyer of his and one against a person who bested him in a court case.
Arthur Aslanian, 54, conspired with his employee Sesar Rivera, 41, to have a hitman kill a pair of his enemies.
Aslanian was also found guilty of a third and separate February 2022 incident in which he paid someone through Rivera to have a vacant unit at a rental property he owned set on fire in order to induce the remaining rental residents to leave.
The lawyer, identified by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California as M.Y., had successfully represented Aslanian in a bankruptcy case — but Aslanian refused to pay $261,000 in legal fees and related expenses.
M.Y. sent Aslanian a letter in April 2022 requesting mediation and warning that he was prepared to sue Aslanian if mediation fell through.
The second target, identified by USAO-CDCA as S.E., was a litigant who had successfully kept Aslanian from taking possession of a Brentwood home in court. S.E.’s parents lived in the domicile.
In April 2022, Rivera met with a gang-affiliated convicted felon looking to arrange the hits. Rivera told the unidentified man that the requests to kill M.Y. and S.E. were coming from a real estate businessman named “Arthur”.
In July of that year, Rivera arranged a second meeting, saying that “Arthur” wanted the dirty deeds done as soon as possible. Rivera showed the unnamed felon information about M.Y., and promised that “Arthur” would pay $20,000 once photo proof of M.Y. and S.E’s deaths were provided.
The felon, however, recorded part of the meeting and proceeded to give that recording to law enforcement.
Rivera and the felon met up again on Aug. 10, 2022. Rivera told the other party to focus on killing S.E. first, and showed the man a Facebook profile belonging to S.E. containing a photo and business information in order to help the felon carry out the hit.
Law enforcement warned the two intended victims about the plots against their lives. On Sept. 7, 2022, Rivera was detained, and was persuaded to cooperate with authorities.
On Sept. 15, 2022, Rivera met up with Aslanian to show him a staged photo of S.E.’s supposed murder scene. Shortly afterwards, Aslanian was arrested.
Aslanian was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, one count of using interstate commerce facilities to commission murder-for-hire, one count of conspiracy to commit arson, one count of attempted arson, and one count of arson of a building used in interstate commerce.
Aslanian faces a statutory maximum of 10 years each for the two murder-for-hire counts, and anywhere between five and 20 years for each arson-related count.
Rivera, who pleaded guilty on March 27 to the two murder-for-hire charges, faces up to 10 years each on both counts.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.