Man gets 27 years in prison for $3.4M fraud scheme involving San Juan Unified students

A Beverly Hills man involved in a credit card scheme that targeted San Juan Unified School District students will likely spend the next 27 years in prison.

Ruslan Kirilyuk, 41, was sentenced to that term in prison by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr., according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California.

Kirilyuk was tried and convicted on 24 counts of wire fraud after working with several others from October 2011 to March 2014. Prosecutors say he conspired with others to create over 70 fake companies and create charges from those companies on stolen American Express credit card accounts, the release said.

Over $3.4 million was charged to 119,00 stolen accounts over that period.

Other conspirators named in the news release were Sacramento’s Mihran Melkonyan, 39, and Alexandr Maslov, 38, along with Studio City’s Rouslan Akhmerov, 45.

The fake companies were created with the personal information of over 200 San Juan Unified students, whose report cards were stolen. The companies, designed to look like real companies, had names such as “CVS Store,” “Walt Mart,” and “Chevran.”

The charges were made by a hacker located in Moscow. The money was then loaded into shell bank accounts of people whose identities had been stolen and of former Russian J-1 visa holders, the release said.

Melkonyan was sentenced to 19 years and two months in prison back in January after being convicted on 24 counts of wire fraud in February 2017.

Akhmerov pleaded guilty to one count of access device fraud in December 2014 and is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 13. Maslov in still awaiting trial with a status conference set for Jan. 31.