United States District Judge John F. Walter
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge called a man “a menace to society” —the first time he said he has done that —while sentencing him to 18 years in federal prison for stalking four female physicians who worked for the VA.
Gueorgui Hristov Pantchev, 51, of West Los Angeles, harassed two female doctors at the West Los Angeles VAMC and two working at the VA’s Loma Linda facility in San Bernardino County, according to court documents.
In sentencing Pantchev to 216 months in federal prison, United States District Judge John F. Walter called the man “a menace to society—a description that I don’t think I have ever used in describing a criminal defendant.”
In July, a federal jury on July 18 found Pantchev guilty of four counts of stalking. According to evidence presented at his five-day trial, the harassment began in 2011 with numerous threatening communications sent to the West LA VA physicians, who were identified in court documents as Victim C and Victim D. As a result of that harassment, Pantchev was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and was convicted in 2014 of seven counts of stalking and witness intimidation.
After serving a state prison sentence, Pantchev was paroled in 2017 and barred from the West LA VAMC. He began seeking medical services at the VA’s Loma Linda facility, where he started stalking, harassing and intimidating Victims A and B, according to court documents.
In violation of his parole conditions, he also sought care at the West LA facility in 2000 and sent harassing and intimidating communications to colleagues of Victims C and D.
That included hundreds of lewd, sexually explicit and defamatory flyers bearing large pictures of Victim C and Victim D which were repeatedly distributed in West LA and other areas of Los Angeles. On the morning of Pantchev’s arrest in January 2021, he drove to Victim D’s home and her child’s elementary school and distributed more sexually explicit flyers, including the victim’s home address and contact information.
“This defendant earned a lengthy prison sentence by terrorizing his victims for years,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada. “The women subjected to his attacks suffered severe emotional distress, including constant fear for their physical safety and the safety of their families.”
Prosecutors argued during the sentencing phase that Pantchev’s “conduct was manifestly harmful and specifically designed to terrorize the victims and their families.”
The judge agreed that Pantchev’s “extreme anti-social behavior puts him in the top five to 10 defendants among the thousands that I have seen in over 20 years on the bench.”
