Eastern European gangster Roman Nikoghoysan, who extorted people and helped a fellow criminal escape from the city’s Bronx jail barge, isn’t just a bad guy — he’s a bad son, a Brooklyn Federal Court judge said at his sentencing Wednesday.
Judge Dora Irizarry hammered Nikoghoysan, 34 — an alleged ranking member of the KavKaz Nation gang — for pulling his mother into the daring 2021 escape scheme as she sentenced him to eight years behind bars for extortion and gun possession Wednesday.
“You helped someone with their escape…. and then you had the nerve to try and involve your mother in helping you with this person’s escape,” Irizarry said.
“Who does that?” asked the judge. “That’s how you love your mother?”
Nikoghoysan pleaded guilty last year to scheming to extort two people and to possessing a rifle despite being a convicted felon.
Prosecutors laid out a string of other crimes he committed in a sentencing memo, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Galeotti said in court that the feds had to wrap up their investigation quicker than planned because of wiretapped conversations suggesting Nikoghoysan was planning stabbings.
The escape happened July 10, 2021, at the Vernon C. Bain Center — the formal name of the city’s jail barge in the Bronx — when David Mordukhaev broke the window of his cell and jumped to the water off Hunts Point, sparking a 12-hour manhunt that ended in his recapture.
After his escape, Mordukhaev called Nikoghosian asking for help, telling him the correction officers “won’t even know I am gone for another week probably” and that he had to “come down from the fifth floor on a rope,” according to federal prosecutors.
Nikoghosian started working the phones and plotting to get his buddy to California.
The first call he made was to his mother, Narine Petrosyan, telling her about the escape and saying that he needed to come to her to pick up money, prosecutors said.
He then told Mordukhaev to grab his girlfriend’s car, which he allegedly was to use to drive to California.
Then, Nikoghosian made two more calls to his mom, telling her to drop $2,000 into a Zelle account for Mordukhaev and to let him stay in her home for a while.
When she worried about security cameras, Nikoghosian told his mom, “It doesn’t matter. He will hold his head down.”
It never came to that. Before Mordukhaev arrived at the apartment of Nikoghosian’s mom, federal law enforcement had him in custody.
His mom declined comment outside the courtroom Wednesday.
As part of his guilty plea, Nikoghosian admitted to extorting an associate who attempted to back out of delivering marijuana in 2021. Nikoghosian threatened to break or stab the reluctant dealer’s legs unless he paid $10,000 as penance for gumming up the pot business, the feds said.
Nikoghosian also admitted to threatening a lawyer into paying a $5,000 debt.
Prosecutors describe KavKaz Nation as a Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach criminal enterprise with ties to the Caucasus region of Eurasia, including Armenia, Uzbekistan, parts of Southern Russia, and Azerbaijan.
Though the escape wasn’t included in the crimes Nikoghosian pleaded guilty to, it factored heavily into prosecutors’ court filings, as did several other crimes that were referenced in wiretapped conversations.
In one of those calls, Nikoghosian sounded out of breath, apparently in the middle of delivering a beating, saying, “You’re gonna die now, ni—!”
Nikoghosyan’s lawyer, Don Savatta, said that his client’s actions stemmed from a “raging” drug addiction that started in his teenage years.
And Nikoghosyan said he planned to “get drugs out of my life” and become a commercial truck driver when he finishes his sentence.
Irizarry wasn’t moved, though, saying that she’s seen “all manner” of people addicted to drugs in her 17 years running a drug court.
“Not all of them resort to violence,” she said. “You are inherently a violent person, and now all of a sudden you want to deal with your drug problem?”
At the end of the sentencing, Savatta asked if his client could spend a brief moment in the courtroom with his mother.
“That’s denied,” Irizarry said.
Nikoghosyan yelled “I love you!” to his mom as he was led away.