West LA man convicted of stalking VA Medical Center doctors
LOS ANGELES - A man was found guilty Monday of federal stalking charges for carrying out a longtime harassment campaign against two female doctors from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Los Angeles, as well as two others who work at the VA's Loma Linda facility.
Gueorgui Pantchev, 50, of West Los Angeles, was convicted of four counts of the offense, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
U.S. District Judge John Walter scheduled a Sept. 26 sentencing hearing, at which time Pantchev will face a maximum of five years in federal prison for each stalking count.
According to evidence presented at his five-day trial, Pantchev's began harassing the two West L.A. doctors in 2011 by sending numerous threatening communications. As a result, he was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and was convicted in 2014 of nine counts of stalking and witness intimidation.
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After serving a state prison sentence, Pantchev was paroled in 2017 and barred from the West L.A. VA Medical Center. Pantchev then began seeking medical services at the VA's Loma Linda facility, where he started stalking, harassing, and intimidating two other doctors.
Pantchev then began returning to the West L.A. campus, even though it was in direct violation of his parole, and started sending harassing and intimidating communications to colleagues of the first two victims.
Federal prosecutors say he deluged the original victims and their colleagues with hundreds of lewd, sexually explicit, and defamatory fliers bearing large pictures of the doctors that Pantchev repeatedly distributed around the West Los Angeles facility and other locations.
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On the morning of Pantchev's arrest in January 2021, he drove to one of the victim's houses and her child's elementary school and distributed more sexually explicit flyers that included the victim's home address and contact information. During a search of Pantchev's residence, law enforcement found more copies of the same flyers, along with printed copies of some of the letters and emails Pantchev sent to victims.
Pantchev has been in federal custody since his arrest in January 2021.