Posted on 04/20/2005 5:49:24 PM PDT by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES (AP) Federal investigators are again searching a Northern California reservoir where investigators several years ago found the bodies of five Los Angeles-area victims of an alleged Russian mob scheme, authorities said Wednesday.
The murders in 2001 and 2002 were tied to an apparent kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Five men and one woman with roots in the former Soviet Union were arrested on federal charges in the case and a seventh suspect remains at large, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.
The FBI has been searching the New Melones Reservoir in the central Sierra Nevada for several days with the assistance of Tuolumne and Calaveras county deputies, said George Ruckman, spokesman for the Tuolumne County sheriff.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the search was ``related to that continuing investigation'' of the bodies found several years ago. She declined to provide details, including what investigators were looking for and why.
The body of the first victim, Sherman Oaks real estate developer Meyer Muscatel, was found in October 2001 in the reservoir. The bodies of Rita Pekler, 39, of Encino; Alexander Umansky, 35, of Sherman Oaks; George Safiev, 37, of Beverly Hills, and Nick Kharabadze, 29, of Woodland Hills were pulled out of the lake in March 2002.
Two people, Aleksejus Markovskis and Ainar Altmanis, pleaded guilty to federal charges to avoid the death penalty.
The federal government is seeking the death penalty against three others, Iouri Mikhel, Jurijus Kadamovas and Petro Krylov. All have pleaded not guilty.
Mikhel, Kadamovas and Krylov are also charged with attempting to escape from jail in downtown Los Angeles in March 2003.
Their federal trial is scheduled to begin in Feburary 2006, Mrozek said.
A sixth suspect, Natalya Solovyeva, is also charged in the case but prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty.
Did they use Scott Peterson as an expert witness.
As a consultant perhaps.
I bet that water taste pretty nasty with 5 bodies to give flavor. yuck
The New Melones Murders
By Si Frumkin
The New Melones Lake, a reservoir near the city of Modesto, is in a quiet, rural area in central California. The reservoir resembles a river more than a lake as it winds its way among the hills of Calaveras and Tuolumne counties.
The reservoir is a popular fishing area, but in the middle of March its catch of the day wasn’t fish: It was four decomposed bodies of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were kidnapped from the Los Angeles area.
The grim discovery sent waves of shock and disbelief through the Los Angeles Russian-speaking community. It was as if a violent script of a Hollywood movie was suddenly real. A kidnapping plot involving millions of dollars, exotic countries sheltering criminals and serving as transfer points for the ransoms, players within the movie industry, and, finally, four — maybe five — brutal murders that made no sense.
The story began over a year ago when two individuals came to Los Angeles from Moscow. They wanted to produce a motion picture about Murat, a legendary rebel who fought the Russians when the czar conquered the Caucasus Mountains region. The visitors claimed to have $50 million for the budget.
They met with several of the better-known Hollywood producers, directors and actors, but when it became obvious that the pair had a lot less than $50 million — just $15 million is the figure spoken of now — the project was abandoned. One of the Russians returned home, the other decided that he liked California and wanted to stay here. His name was Georgy Safiev.
One of the people Safiev approached for help was Rita Pekler, an accountant who helped Safiev get a permanent residence permit, establish a business and buy an expensive home in Beverly Hills.
Meanwhile, Safiev kept trying to penetrate the movie industry. He too was seen as a Russian by the Americans he met, but he was neither Russian nor Jewish. His background was Lesghin — one of the many ethnicities in the Caucasus Mountains — and he became friendly with another family whose roots were in the Caucasus — the famous Georgian movie star, the beautiful Rusiko Kiknadze (a relative of Georgia’s President Eduard Shevarnadze) and her 29-year-old son, Nick Kharabadze. Kiknadze’s husband, a specialist in motion picture technology both in Russia and in the United States, Matvey (Mat) Shatz was the only Jew in this group.
Nick was a very talented, charismatic USC graduate and an aspiring movie producer. He apparently persuaded Safiev to bankroll a movie he wanted to produce. He shared the news with his good friend Alex Umansky, another young man with hopes of a career in the film industry, and the two of them told anyone who would listen about Nick’s windfall. The story of Safiev’s wealth — money he had brought with him from Russia — and Nick’s fortune, apparently excited the four men who are currently being charged in the New Melones murders. Ainar Altmanas (the only one with a Jewish surname), Jurijus Kadamovas (a Lithuanian), Petro Krylov (a Ukrainian) and Yuri Mikhel (unknown background) are charged with kidnapping Georgy Safiev on Jan. 20, Umansky on Dec. 13, and Pekler and Kharabadze in early December.
Pekler was still alive after Dec. 5 when she called Safiev and asked to see him right away — Safiev was about to get on a plane and couldn’t see her. Kharabadze also made a phone call after disappearing. He called his home to say that he was OK, in Las Vegas and not to worry. A little later he apparently withdrew a large sum of money from his bank account. A surveillance tape shows him being accompanied by a man who was watching him very closely.
The kidnappers allegedly demanded a $5 million ransom for Safiev and $250,000 for Umansky. At least $1 million of the ransom was allegedly transferred from Moscow to the United Arab Emirates and Dubai, the location of two other suspects, Andrei Augeev and Andrei Liapine, who were allegedly supposed to remit that money to the kidnappers.
One of the mysteries in the case is the death of a nonimmigrant, Meyer Muscatel of Sherman Oaks, a religious Jew, a real estate developer and a man who dreamed of setting up learning centers for disabled children. The fact that his body was found floating in New Melones Lake and that Pekler was the accountant for both Muscatel and Safiev are the only connections between his death on Oct. 13 and the disappearances of the four immigrants two to three months later.
The trial of the four kidnapping suspects and their alleged accomplices is sure to be a media circus. We can only hope that it will not serve to generate anti-immigrant feelings against the law-abiding Russian-speaking community.
Ping
Wow, Russian Mob, Real Estate Developers....This is interesting.
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