In New York, sentenced to gangster Pelmen: how a Ukrainian led the mafia in the United States

The Brooklyn federal judge Brian Kogan, who sentenced drug lord El Chapo to a life sentence of plus 30 years last year, sentenced Ukrainian Alexei Tsvetkov, nicknamed Pelmen. Kogan sentenced 40-year-old Tsvetkov to 198 months in prison (16,5 years). Of these, according to the calculations of the prosecutor, a native of the family of Soviet emigrants Andrei Spector, he will serve 12,5 years, reports Air Force

Фото: Depositphotos

The short, burly Tsvetkov was one of the three leaders of the Brooklyn gang, which did not acquire a self-name and is referred to in court documents as a “syndicate.”

Other members of this triumvirate are prosecutors calling former Odessa citizen Leonid Gershman, whom Kogan had previously sentenced to 16,5 years, and Viktor Zeligman - DEA, the federal drug control agency, describes him in closed documents as the second person in the Ukrainian mafia in the United States.

In August 2016, Zeligman flew from New York Airport to them. Kennedy is in Turkey and has since been wanted.

9 other members of the brigade pleaded guilty, but Tsvetkov and Gershman chose to give themselves to the mercy of the jury. Their three-week trial ended in August 2018 with a guilty verdict.

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"Bari Brigade"

Pelmen's street authority was based not only on his cockiness and self-imposed thieves' stars, but also on his old conviction in the case of the so-called Brighton Beach Brigade, or "Bari Brigade", named after its leader Zinovy ​​Bari.

In 2005, Tsvetkov received 78 months in prison in that case and, having no American citizenship, was subject to deportation to Ukraine after his release, but he deftly avoided it.

While awaiting deportation in an immigration prison, he declared himself a Jew and asked for a deferment, explaining his request by saying that in Ukraine he allegedly faced torture as a Jew. He told an immigration judge in March 2010: “I now celebrate Jewish holidays. I don't profess Christianity."

The judge eventually ordered Tsvetkov to leave for the United States, referring to the convention against torture.

“It turned out that the convict is not a practicing Jew,” prosecutors now wrote to Judge Kogan, noting that after his arrest, Tsvetkov was found to have a large cross tattoo on his arm. He also wore a pectoral cross with diamonds worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Tsvetkov’s mobile phone contained a photo of his son’s baptism, which was held in his hands by his accomplice Gershman.

On the same telephone, they found a video depicting how Tsvetkov was beating up a debtor on a pavement in front of his car repair shop, in which they not only repaired cars, but also turned insurance scams. According to prosecutors, Tsvetkov liked to boast of this video, which they did not fail to show to the jury at his trial.

The most serious crime, of which, according to court documents, Tsvetkov is suspected of, was the murder of Yevgeny Polyakov, who was shot dead 20 years ago on Brooklyn Street. As prosecutors wrote to Judge Kogan, Tsvetkov, who was not charged with this murder, allegedly provided him with a gun and was driving a car in which the killer had fled the scene of the crime.

A few years later, Stanislav Lantsberg, who came from Ukraine, admitted to this murder, who was involved in the huge drug trade case at the beginning of the XNUMXs.

Last June, prosecutors sent Judge Kogan a lengthy petition in which they called for Tsvetkov to be sentenced to almost a quarter of a century in prison. “Tsvetkov is dangerous and stubbornly continues to harm people,” they wrote.

According to them, Tsvetkov’s criminal career began a few years after his arrival in the United States. When he was 17, he took a golden chain from a man, threatening him with a blade. Then they found the chain and the blade from him during the search and punished Tsvetkov with five days of community service.

After that, he took the car from another victim and wrecked it. He was conditionally punished for a year. According to prosecutors, Tsvetkov was arrested three times for other minor crimes, but he invariably managed with a slight fright.

After turning 20, he joined the Bari Brigade, which engaged in fraud, protection and loan sharking, stole checks from mailboxes and, like almost all such groups in New York, ran underground gambling establishments, or katrans.

Subsequently, Tsvetkov told his wife that the “Bari Brigade” was distinguished by a more violent disposition than the “syndicate”.

In particular, he somehow suspected a friend of tapping and hit him on the head with a board with nails.

In April 2002, Tsvetkov burst into a nightclub with a machete in search of his master, who owed him money.

The prosecution's evidence in the Bari Gang case included video footage taken from a Brighton Beach store that was being raided by the gang. In the video, Tsvetkov brutally beat a store employee, who was then taken away in an ambulance, and broke the goods.

In the light of these and other episodes, the term of 78 months was, according to prosecutors, relatively moderate. In prison, Tsvetkov was twice caught storing weapons in the form of a small barn lock hanging on his belt, and a nail hidden in a glass of soup.

He was released in November 2010, having made a solemn promise not to indulge in crime, but two years later he again joined the ranks of organized crime even before his term of public oversight expired.

The most serious crime for which Tsvetkov was convicted was the arson in May 2016 of a three-story wooden house on Voorhees Avenue, on the ground floor of which there was a rival katran, and above were residential apartments. A 19-year-old student, Shahzod Bobokalonov, and his 12-year-old brother were rescued from a burning apartment by firefighters.

Sitting in the Brooklyn federal bullpen MDC, Tsvetkov wasted no time and sued his prison and federal bailiffs for $ 2 million. It turns out that on November 14, 2016, when the prison bus in which he was being taken out of the MDC, its gates closed prematurely and hit the back of the aforementioned avtozak.

As stated in Tsvetkov’s statement of claim, filed in April 2018, as a result of this incident, Tsvetkov, according to him, received “serious injuries” that “required and will require medical intervention in the future.”

What happens in court

The lawsuit is still being heard in the same court, in which Tsvetkov was finally sentenced, previously postponed many times.

The next hearing on this lawsuit is scheduled for June, when the plaintiff will be required to either be in Otisville Prison in New York State or in Fort Dicks in New Jersey.

The ceremony at which the verdict was pronounced lasted just under an hour and a half. At the beginning, Prosecutor Spector cited a long list of Tsvetkov’s crimes over the past 23 years and noted that “it’s rare to see a person who received two sentences for participating in organized crime.” According to him, after serving his first sentence, “Tsvetkov left prison the same as he was,” and quickly took up his old ways.

The prosecutor expressed doubt that the convict would be reformable at all. According to him, he was not reforged in prison. On the contrary, the prison was for Tsvetkov “a graduate school in which he pinned himself with thieves’ stars.”

When Kogan invited Tsvetkov to say the last word, he behaved unusually. Typically, the convicts either refuse, or apologize in favor of a concession for repentance, or make the last attempt to convince the judge of their innocence, as Vyacheslav Ivankov, nicknamed Yaponchik, who spoke for almost an hour and a half, did in the same court a quarter century ago.

Tsvetkov began by attacking the prosecutor, declaring in decent English: “I can’t hear this lie! Stop lying! You fooled the jury! You lied under oath to a jury in a federal courtroom!”

"Your Honor! - he turned to Kogan. “There are so many lies that I can’t stand these lies anymore!”

“Are you trying to bury me?!” - he turned to Spector again. - You are crazy! I will tell you to your face that you have something personal against me! I have children! (Tsvetkov has two of them, aged 3 and 5 years).

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In the end, Tsvetkov still paid tribute to secular conventions and said: “I want to apologize for what I did to my family.”

His relatives and sympathizers occupied half of the benches for the public.

Experience shows that the presence of relatives of a prisoner can make a favorable impression. And now Kogan noted that in the hall are Tsvetkov’s relatives, who clearly love him. However, he immediately added that he had listened to the recordings of Tsvetkov’s conversations in which he threatened his wife and girlfriend from prison.

“Who talks to women like that?! - Kogan exclaimed indignantly. “He says he wants to be a father to his children, but I’m not sure he’s capable of that.” All your life you have had a clear tendency towards violence and anger. I don't see any remorse. You consider yourself a victim! You are a terribly dangerous person, you are on edge all the time!”

When Kogan announced the verdict, Tsvetkov’s wife ran out of the hall sobbing. “It’s worse here than in Russia!” — the mother of one of the condemned’s accomplices told me with indignation. His third - this time free - lawyer Murray Singer told the judge that he would appeal.

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