LOS ANGELES _ Facing charges of health care fraud, Tigran Svadjian, a Newport Beach doctor, agreed to go undercover for federal prosecutors.
But before he would wear a wire, he told them, he needed to visit his ailing mother in Russia.
He never returned. The day he was to appear in court in 2002, prosecutors received paperwork from a Russian morgue stating that, just a few days before, Svadjian had died of pneumonia.
More than 10 years passed before prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss the charges against Svadjian. In 2013, they discarded the evidence collected against him.
The criminal case against Svadjian was over. His estate was divided up among creditors. His wife and children moved on with efforts to rebuild their lives.
Then, one day in July, a man traveling on a fake Lithuanian passport landed in Kiev.
