Victor Malarek - The Natashas

“I’ve heard that a lot of these women have no idea they’re going into prostitution when they accept these so-called job offers to work abroad,” I countered. “In fact, I’ve read that a lot of them think they’re going to be waitresses or hotel cleaning staff.”

Fainberg held his fire.

I find that difficult to believe. I was present on many occasions when girls were being hired. Plus, at some point I had over twenty girls from Russia, Ukraine and Romania who came to work in the States. Maybe some of them don’t know. But how stupid do you have to be that you are going to a different country to work as a waitress or dancer in a club? It is really stupidity. It’s dumb. Women know what they are going for. Sometimes when they realize their mistakes or they’re getting hurt, it’s easy to blame somebody else for being so dumb. I think they should only blame themselves for getting into that.

He grudgingly conceded that some of these women are duped. “I think 10 percent don’t know what they’re getting into. Ninety percent know exactly what they’re going to do. What they may not know exactly is the conditions or how much money they will get.”

“You don’t have a problem with pushing women who are absolutely destitute into prostitution?”

“Look, that’s what they can offer. Life is a business. It’s a trade. You want to give something for nothing? You can help once or twice. But then ten, twenty or forty times? For that you want to get something in return.”

“What kind of money are we talking here?” I asked. “How much will it cost to bring a woman over, and what kind of profit can be made?”

“If it is run the proper way, the clean way, you can have a good clientele and make a lot of money. You can buy a woman for $10,000 and you can make your money back in a week if she is pretty and she is young. Then everything else is profit.”

I asked about getting the women into Canada or the United States.

“It is so simple, so very simple,” he bragged. “You know after 9/11 how difficult it was supposed to be to get into the United States? I will show you right now how easily we can get into the United States and then come back, and nobody will ever know we were in there.” He went on to hint that certain Russian mobsters have connections with Native gangs whose reserves straddle the Canada–U.S. border.

A couple of days later, Canadian Immigration authorities swooped in and arrested Fainberg in his comfortable Ottawa lair. He was labeled a threat to national security and public safety, and ordered deported to Israel.

THE EASE WITH WHICH criminals like Fainberg enter the flesh trade is not only sobering; it’s absolutely astounding. Take the classic trafficking case in Chicago that began in September 1996.

Alex Mishulovich, a thirty-eight-year-old unemployed insurance broker, was approached by Serguie Tcharouchine, a

Russian cab driver, with a no-lose, moneymaking business proposition: fly to Riga, the capital of Latvia, to recruit beautiful young women as nude dancers for local strip clubs in the Windy City. Serguie had a silent partner willing to put up the cash. Mishulovich was the ideal front man because he was a newly minted U.S. citizen and could travel freely to the former Soviet Union. He was also the perfect person to manage the women once they were in the States, largely because of his persona: he was a thug. It didn’t take much convincing, and a month later he set off for Riga.

Mishulovich was no fool. He knew he needed help with the sales pitch; his demeanor was a little too intimidating. He was heavy-set, wore thick black-plastic-rimmed glasses, sported a goatee and had a shaved head. Soon after his arrival he hooked up with an obliging associate—a twenty-one-year-old leggy blue-eyed blonde named Rudite Pede. After cementing the deal, the duo set off to troll the streets for pretty women.

Rudite was the perfect lure, introducing her conquests to her “American businessman” partner. Passing himself off as the owner of a sophisticated, exclusive “gentlemen’s club,” Mishulovich said he was looking to hire dancers for his Chicago establishment. He stressed that no sex, no nudity and no touching was permitted. His dancers danced in a bikini, he assured the dubious women, never topless or nude, and they made $60,000 a year. In Latvia, where the average monthly income is about $250, the offer was just too enticing to turn down. In no time at all the pair had reeled in five young hopefuls: all in their early twenties, all blondes and all striking.

There was a bit of a twist in getting the girls into the States. Mishulovich claimed he had a connection at the U.S. embassy in Riga, which made it easier for him to get tourist visas. He coached the girls on what to say to the official and helped them fill out their visa applications. But as the departure date neared, one of the women got cold feet. She felt that something wasn’t quite right and tried to pull out. Mishulovich went berserk. Screaming like a madman, he pulled her aside and threatened to cut up her “pretty face” so that no man would ever want to look at her again. He also warned her that he had many friends in the feared Chechen Mafia, a notorious crime organization, who would be “happy” to kill her family. The terrified woman duly boarded the plane bound for the U.S.

Upon arriving at Chicago’s O’Hare airport the girls were picked up by Serguie, who relieved them of their travel documents and return airline tickets. They were taken to the Mount Prospect suburb, where they were locked in a one-bedroom apartment. Serguie became their constant guard. Once on American soil, Mishulovich informed the women that they each owed him $60,000 for the airline tickets and arrangements to enter the U.S. They would have to pay off their debt by dancing nude in a strip bar. When one of the girls flat-out refused, he slammed her head into a wall. The woman sustained a concussion and was left bedridden for days. Worried about raising suspicions, her new owner refused to take her to a hospital or call in a doctor. Another woman who balked was hit in the head with Rollerblades, given a black eye and punched in the nose.

Throughout their ordeal the women were governed by strict rules enforced by verbal tirades and random beatings. They couldn’t leave the apartment without Serguie in tow. When he left his post he locked them in and took away the phone. But Mishulovich was the real enforcer. He swaggered around the apartment toting a rifle and a pistol. When the girls talked back or didn’t make enough money on a given night, he took them to the garage and brutally beat them.

On one occasion, when the girls were preparing dinner, he grabbed one of them, put a gun to her head and boasted how easy it would be to pull the trigger. On another, he put a knife to a woman’s throat, threatening to slash her face. He repeatedly warned them that if they happened to get themselves arrested and deported to their homeland, he would track them down and would enlist the help of his Chechen Mafia connections in Riga to rape and kill them and their families. To emphasize his point, from the neck of one of the girls he snapped a locket that contained a picture of her mother, bellowing that now it would be easier for his mob associates to hunt the woman down and kill her if the need arose.

Mishulovich was also a consummate pig. He constantly made crude advances. He would paw the women, masturbate in front of them, watch pornographic videos when they were around and barge into the washroom when they were showering and demand that they perform oral sex on him.

Within a couple of weeks he managed to get them all California driver’s licenses and fake social security cards. Then he drove the girls to an audition at a local strip club, presenting them as experienced dancers with expertise in Florida and the Windy City. But the club manager could see that these women were pathetically inept at exotic dance, and they were shown the door. Mishulovich exploded in rage. He dispatched Serguie to the local video outlet to rent the movies Striptease, starring Demi Moore, and Showgirls, starring Elizabeth Berkley. The girls were forced to watch them over and over, while practicing bump-and-grind techniques in the living room under the watchful eyes of their controllers.