A 55-year-old San Gabriel Valley man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hiring a hitman in two attempted murder-for-hire plots and paying someone to burn an apartment complex in North Hollywood so he could expel low-income tenants, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday.
Arthur Raffy Aslanian of La Cañada Flintridge, sentenced on Monday, May 6, was also fined $200,000 and ordered to pay $15,371 in restitution.
In July 2023, Aslanian was found guilty by a jury of one count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of 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, prosecutors said.
Aslanian’s co-conspirator and former employee, 41-year-old Sesar Rivera of North Hollywood, pleaded guilty in March 2023 to one count of conspiracy and one count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. Rivera faces up to 10 years in prison for each count at his July 8 sentencing.
The two conspired to hire a hitman to murder Aslanian’s former bankruptcy lawyer, who prosecutors said threatened to sue him after he refused to pay all his legal fees and expenses, as well as a man who defeated him in court after Aslanian tried to take possession of his parent’s home in Brentwood.
In 2022, Rivera met with a gang member and told him a businessman wanted him to kill the two people and shared personal information belonging to the lawyer and litigant, according to court records. Rivera told the alleged hitman Aslanian would pay $20,000 once there was photographic proof of the killings. The hitman secretly recorded a portion of the in-person meeting with Rivera and shared it with law enforcement, officials said.
Rivera also helped Aslanian with a separate crime in 2022, when he paid someone several hundred dollars to set fire to a rental property the businessman owned in North Hollywood so low-income tenants would have to move, according to prosecutors.
That same year, Rivera was questioned by authorities and agreed to work with them. Aslanian was arrested shortly after on Sep. 7, 2022, following an in-person meeting with Rivera, where he showed Aslanian a staged homicide-scene photograph of the litigant he wanted killed.
“ATF saved the lives of two individuals in this case,” said Christopher Bombardiere, Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We will continue to work tirelessly to seek out and build cases against these violent criminals who have no moral compass and instead are driven by greed.”
