A West Los Angeles man who engaged in a harassment campaign targeting two female doctors at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and two other female doctors working at the VA’s Loma Linda facility in San Bernardino County, was sentenced on Oct. 25 to 18 years in federal prison.

The defendant, Gueorgui Hristov Pantchev, 51, was sentenced by United States District Judge John F. Walter, who said Pantchev, “is a menace to society – a description that I don’t think I have ever used in describing a criminal defendant.” A federal jury on July 18 found Pantchev guilty of four counts of stalking. According to evidence presented at his five-day trial, Pantchev’s conduct with two of the doctors began in 2011 with numerous threatening communications sent to them. As a result of the 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 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 victims, prosecutors said.

Notwithstanding the parole conditions that prohibited him from going to the West L.A. facility, Pantchev sought care there in 2020 and began sending harassing and intimidating communications to colleagues of the doctors who he had originally targeted, authorities added. The defendant sent hundreds of lewd, sexually explicit and defamatory fliers bearing large pictures of the doctors, and distributed them around the West L.A. VA facility and numerous other locations in the Los Angeles area.

“This defendant earned a lengthy prison sentence by terrorizing his victims for years,” United States Attorney Martin Estrada said. “The women subjected to his attacks suffered severe emotional distress, including constant fear for their physical safety and the safety of their families. Protecting victims is critical to the mission of our office, and I hope [this] sentencing brings them a sense of justice and security.”

Pantchev has been in federal custody since being arrested in January 2021. The FBI and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs investigated the case.