Freedman Represents Defendant in Federal Murder-for-Hire Case

An exhibit from a U.S. District Court document shows a staged photograph that was used by authorities in the case against Arthur Aslanian, accused of a plot to kill two business associates. This photo was staged and the man was not injured.

In the photo, the seemingly lifeless body of a well-dressed, gray-haired banker is splayed out on a patch of grass. There is an apparent bullet wound by his right ear and blood has stained his white shirt.

But the man was alive and well.

The photo, filed in court by federal prosecutors last month, was of a staged murder — the coup de grace in a ruse federal agents used to catch a Los Angeles real estate developer whom they suspected of plotting to kill two men.

“That’s him,” the developer, Arthur Aslanian, said when his assistant, who was secretly recording the conversation for investigators, showed him the photo as proof one of the men had been killed. Aslanian then told the assistant to destroy the photograph and never speak about the murder again, according to federal prosecutors.

Aslanian was arrested the same day, charged with planning to kill the business associate in the photograph, as well as an attorney who had once represented him in a bankruptcy case. Prosecutors allege Aslanian opted to have the men killed instead of paying the millions of dollars he owed to the associate and a smaller debt to his former lawyer.

Read more in LA Times>>