Gomidas Garabed Hartounian, 50 of Franklin Lakes was arrested on charges alleging that he stole nearly $6.3 million from his company and funneled secret payments to himself, New Jersey federal prosecutors say.
He is the chief financial officer of the Englewood Company, and is facing up to 20 years in state prison on a wire fraud charge for a scheme that ran from April 2007 through April 2014, according to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.
Prosecutors say Hartounian registered a company he called MGB LLC to his Franklin Lakes home and claimed it provided freight services. Hartounian then had the company where he worked as C.F.O. issue checks to MGB by forging the signatures of the chief executive officer and the chief operating officer, prosecutors say.
The money he took was used to pay personal expenses that included his credit card bill, mortgage payments, motor vehicle costs and high school fees, according to a criminal complaint filed by prosecutors.
Hartounian designated MGB as a vendor in the company s accounting system and, when asked for invoices, claimed he was keeping them in his office, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors declined to identify the name of the company where Hartounian worked as chief financial officer. Following a court appearance this afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Clark ordered Hartounian to remain on home detention with an electronic location monitoring device until he can secure a co-signer for a $500,000 unsecured bond. Hartounian, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Armenia, was also ordered to surrender his passport.
His attorney, Douglas Stevinson, declined to comment after the hearing.
The investigation was led by agents from the Newark field office of the FBI.
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