A federal jury on Monday, July 18, 2022, convicted Gueorgui Hristov Pantchev, 50, on four counts of stalking female physicians at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the VA’s Loma Linda facility in San Bernardino County. Composite by Coffee or Die Magazine.
A federal jury has convicted a Los Angeles veteran who embarked on a harassment campaign against four female VA doctors, including papering hospitals and neighborhoods with lewd flyers advertising their sexual availability.
The jury returned its verdict late Monday, July 18, following a five-day trial. They found Gueorgui Hristov Pantchev, 50, guilty of four counts of stalking.
Pantchev remains incarcerated in Metropolitan Detention Center Los Angeles pending his sentencing on Sept. 26 before US District Judge John F. Walter. If he serves each count consecutively, he could serve up to two decades in a federal penitentiary.
Pantchev’s criminal defense attorneys did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The West Los Angeles VA Medical Center is located a mile west of UCLA. It serves as the major neurosurgery referral hospital for VA patients in Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. UCLA photo.
In 2014, a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court convicted Pantchev on multiple counts of stalking and witness intimidation involving two of the four victims in the federal case.
He was on parole from prison when he began his second campaign terrorizing the US Department of Veterans Affairs personnel in 2017.
Pantchev suffers from service-connected traumatic brain injury, according to court filings. As a condition of his parole following the California conviction, Pantchev was barred from receiving treatment at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, so he sought care at the VA's Loma Linda clinic.
FBI agents reported he began stalking and harassing three Loma Linda employees known in court documents only as Victims 3, 4, and 5.
Despite his parole order, Pantchev returned to receive treatment at West LA VA in the summer of 2020 and returned to stalking Victims 1 and 2, according to the FBI.
Federal prosecutors later charged Pantchev with stalking four of the five women.
The Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center is the centerpiece of the VA's outreach to veterans in Loma Linda, California. US Department of Veterans Affairs photo.
Pantchev’s intimidation campaign against them included posting lewd and racist flyers across the VA campuses where the staffers worked and the neighborhoods where they lived. He also slipped notes under their office doors and peppered their VA email accounts with bizarre messages, calling the women “sorceresses,” “witches,” and rougher epithets.
Some of the emails and letters were rambling manifestos against the staffers and other VA employees. Others appeared to suggest violence using a .50-caliber rifle or depicted rape fantasies. Some came attached with pornographic images.
Pantchev sent them poems, including one that included a threat to dip “his testicles in hot coffee” and bite “one off as toffee” to use to “sweeten my coffee.”
One of Pantchev’s victims had been dealing with his abuse since 2009, according to the FBI.
The FBI is the primary federal investigator of cyberstalking. Cyberstalking is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. A life sentence can be imposed if the cyberstalking results in the death of a victim. FBI photo.
In July of 2020, the chaplain of the Loma Linda facility contacted Victim 3 to warn her that there were placards posted in the San Bernardino County community of Alta Loma with her name and telephone numbers on them.
They graphically advertised sexual services for $1,000.
Five months later, more flyers appeared across the West LA VA and Long Beach campus and at the Brentwood home of one of the women’s parents. Others circulated in Manhattan Beach, Pepperdine University in Malibu, and at a strip mall outside the campus.
The posters targeted Victims 1 and 2 by using their photos and included racist language and descriptions of Satanic sex rituals and graphic acts performed on other VA staffers.
Some signs claimed the VA female staffer would have sex with minor boys.
Carl Prine is a former senior editor at Coffee or Die Magazine. He has worked at Navy Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He served in the Marine Corps and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. His awards include the Joseph Galloway Award for Distinguished Reporting on the military, a first prize from Investigative Reporters & Editors, and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
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