PUBLIC SAFETY
Two men who pretended to be customers Tuesday afternoon at a dry cleaning shop on Broadway handcuffed one of the shop’s owners and demanded cash.
No injuries were reported as store owner Suzan Tenekedjyan and her husband tried to make sense of the robbery. Both were working at their shop, Broadway Cleaners, when a man walked in about 12:50 p.m. carrying several pieces of clothing, she said.
She didn’t think much about the man at first, but he later appeared to be nervous, she said.
She gave him a receipt and showed him how to fill it out because she said he was fidgeting with it.
A second man walked in the shop, which is in a strip mall on Broadway and Adams Street, but instead of dropping off his clothes for dry cleaning, he brandished a gun, which was hidden in the garments, she said.
He yelled at her and her husband and demanded cash, she said.
She told the men, who she said appeared to be working together, that the shop didn’t have a cash register. A police report listed a cell phone as the only missing item from the store.
A 35-year-old Glendale man was sentenced Monday to nearly six years in prison for using fake identities to defraud trucking companies and brokers out of at least $2.8 million.
U.S. District Court Judge John Walter convicted Nicholas Lakes, who was also known as Dmitry Nadezhdin, of five counts of computer and mail fraud, which he said carried a prison term of five years and 10 months.
He also ordered Lakes to pay more than $2.8 million in restitution to the trucking companies and brokers for the scheme.
Lakes worked with Viacheslav Berkovich, 34, of Los Feliz during the fraud scheme, between January 2007 and September. Berkovich has pleaded guilty, but has yet to be sentenced.
The pair reportedly used fake identities and created a bogus trucking company to gain access to the Safety and Fitness Electronic Records System website, which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration maintains.
Through the website they were able to arrange the transport of goods to listed companies and brokerages.
CITY HALL
In response to the growing statewide water crisis, the City Council on Tuesday authorized changes to the city’s water conservation ordinance — paving the way for regulations limiting outdoor watering to three times a week in August.
