Michael Finnegan / Los Angeles Times (TNS)
LOS ANGELES — Prosecutors had no faith that Tamara Dadyan could be trusted to turn herself in.
Moments after the brash Encino, California, real estate broker was sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison for her key role in a tawdry pandemic loan scam, prosecutor Christopher Fenton asked a judge to put her in prison immediately. There was a “high, high likelihood,” he said, that Dadyan would flee, just as two relatives had done after their convictions in the same case.
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson disagreed. “I’m going to give her 30 days to self-surrender,” he said.
Dadyan vanished on Jan. 28, dodging both her federal prison sentence and her upcoming trial on unrelated state mortgage fraud charges.
It was a crushing blow to prosecutors and investigators who uncovered the conspiracy by Dadyan and seven others to use fake companies, phony payrolls, forged tax returns and stolen driver’s licenses to get $18 million in emergency loans meant to rescue small businesses ravaged by 2020 lockdowns.
The disappearance of Dadyan and the two others highlights the risks that judges take when they give convicted white-collar criminals weeks or months to get their affairs in order before voluntarily reporting to prison — a common practice in federal court.
It also underscores the extreme difficulty of capturing fugitives in financial crime cases, especially swindlers like Dadyan who…
