Armen Karapetyan is a former stock broker who was banned from the brokerage business.
Lev Parnas worked at a brokerage business, Basis Financial, which was owned by Karapetyan and shut down by the SEC for fraud involving the selling of stocks. One of the companies the companies they falsely promoted was Pharmco.
“Independent/broker-dealer Basis Financial LLC, and its owner and CEO Armen Karapetyan have been charged with defrauding customers of about $1.8 million over a three year span through four private placement offerings involving financially shaky issuers.”
-Nicholas Guiliani, Giuliano Law Group
Karapetyan was also once involved with Parnas in the promotion of Edgetech International to raise capital and its stock price.
Edgetech is a company started by Lev Parnas and his family to market internet devices made by Datawind.
Karapetyan was also in business with Karina Belkin, who happens to be the CEO of Pharmco, the business he was falsely promoting to investors.
Karina Belkin’s maiden name is Grafman. She’s the daughter of Igor Grafman, who was the head of one of the Russian mafia gangs in New York. It’s been alleged that back in the 90’s he was behind the murder of several of his rivals.
Alex Bolbirer, cousin of Lev Parnas
| South Florida Healthcare Group, L.L.C. | Inactive | 2011 | Manager |
| Spark Financial Consulting, Inc. | Active | 2010 | President |
| Basis Fx Corp. | Inactive | 2008 | Director |
| Sfh II Acquisition Corp. | Inactive | 2006 | Chairman |
| Sfh I Acquisition Corp. | Inactive | 2006 | Chairman |
| Florida Estates, L.L.C. | Inactive | 2005 | Manager |
| Southeastern Financial Holdings, LLC | Inactive | 2003 | Manager |
| Basis Financial, L.L.C. | Inactive | 1997 | Manager |
- Barred as a broker
- Article on his scams from Giuliano Law Group
Firm Expelled, Individuals Sanctioned Basis Financial, LLC (CRD #43694, North Miami Beach, Florida),
Armen Karapetyan aka Armen Karr (CRD #2634993, Registered Principal, Sunny Isles Beach, Florida) and Gabriel Gennady Goldfine (CRD #1971502, Registered Representative, Brooklyn, New York) submitted an Offer of Settlement in which the firm was expelled from FINRA membership, Karapetyan was barred from association with any FINRA member in any capacity, and Goldfine was fined $37,500 and suspended from association with any FINRA member in any capacity for one year. The fine must be paid either immediately upon Goldfine’s reassociation with a FINRA member firm following his suspension, or prior to the filing of any application or request for relief from any statutory disqualification, whichever is earlier. Without admitting or denying the allegations, the firm, Karapetyan and Goldfine consented to the described sanctions and to the entry of findings that they made a series of material misrepresentations and omissions, and engaged in other misconduct in connection with the sale of private placement offerings to investors. The findings stated that the firm, Karapetyan and Goldfine received substantial undisclosed compensation and failed to disclose other material facts, including that the issuers had substantial outstanding debts to be paid from proceeds raised in offerings, the proceeds were to be used to make unsecured loans to other entities Karapetyan owned and controlled, or the issuers’ financial condition was tenuous. The findings also stated that the firm and Karapetyan failed to conduct a reasonable investigation prior to recommending an investment to customers despite “red flags,” including the failure of an issuer to provide audited financial information. The findings also included that the firm and Karapetyan participated in the sale of unregistered securities, and despite red flags, failed to undertake any investigation to determine the circumstances under which entities obtained shares of stock, including when they were obtained, how the shares were obtained and whether the shares were paid for.
FINRA found that the firm and Karapetyan failed to establish and implement anti-money laundering (AML) policies and procedures reasonably expected to detect and cause the reporting of suspicious activity, failed to conduct an AML test one year, failed to conduct an independent test the previous year, and failed to conduct annual AML training one year. FINRA also found that the firm failed to identify Karapetyan as a producing manager generating more than 20 percent of the firm’s revenue as subject to heightened supervision, and failed to designate any firm individual as responsible for his supervision. As a result, Karapetyan reviewed his own trades, and his customer account 2 Disciplinary and Other FINRA Actions November 2012 activity was not supervised by any other firm individual. In addition, FINRA determined that Karapetyan used outside, Web-based email accounts for firm business, and the firm neither stored nor backed up any emails from these accounts. Thus, the firm willfully violated the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirement to capture and preserve business email communications sent through personal, Web-based email accounts. Moreover, FINRA found that the firm and Karapetyan failed to report, and failed to timely report, customer complaints to FINRA as required, failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system, and failed to establish, maintain and enforce written supervisory procedures (WSPs) reasonably designed to achieve compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations with respect to the firm’s business regarding the handling of deposits and liquidations of large blocks of low-priced securities to ensure the firm did not participate in or permit an unregistered distribution of securities and with respect to the reporting of customer complaints to ensure the capture and preservation of personal Web-based email accounts, the firm’s private placement business and the supervision of registered representatives who participated in the sale of private placement offerings the firm sold. Goldfine’s suspension is in effect from October 15, 2012, through October 14, 2013. (FINRA Case #2009016158001)
This post is supporting documentation and information for the West Wing Mafia series. As our research continues, it will be updated as needed.
The West Wing Mafia is an international network of individuals and businesses that can be traced back for several decades. It consists of individuals who are interconnected through family and business, it includes members of organized crime, oligarchs and politicians. It also includes members of the Trump family.
Disclaimer: The impeachment and removal of a United States president is matter of major public interest, which makes anyone connected to Trump and his shenanigans a person of interest as well. We at Iron Troll are reporting information which we believe to be relevant, or may become relevant, to the most horrific international political scandal in modern history
While we absolutely believe in presumption of innocence until proven otherwise in a court of law, we will exercise our first amendment right to post the findings of our reserch and to express our opinions on those findings.
So please don’t send a hit man to ice us, bro.
