Victor Malarek - The Natashas

Once they had their dance routines down pat they were farmed out to local strip bars—the Skybox, the Crazy Horse and the Admiral Theatre… and the money came rolling in. Every evening Mishulovich or Serguie drove them to work, picked them up afterward and collected the cash. Each girl brought in $200 to $500 a night. Mishulovich took virtually all their earnings, leaving them with no more than $20 a day. He also went through their purses and threatened to strip-search them if he suspected they were hiding cash. He then split the proceeds with his partner. Times were good.

In no time at all, Mishulovich elevated his status in Chicago’s Russian-Jewish émigré community and in the process became a big spender, fond of untold luxuries and the finer things in life. He shopped at upscale shops, wore designer suits, dined at exclusive restaurants and drank expensive liquor.

Then came the first sign of trouble. In January 1997 Serguie was nabbed while shoplifting at a Mount Prospect jewelry store. He was convicted, and since he didn’t have permanent resident status in the U.S. he was deported to

Russia two months later. With Serguie out of the picture Mishulovich found himself visited by what had, until now, remained his silent partner—a twenty-something, bookish-looking man, wearing small wire-rimmed glasses. He had short, curly dark hair and a baby face. Formerly Vadim Gorokhovski, he now went by the name of Vadim Gorr, and he wanted to protect his investment.

Gorr and Mishulovich continued farming the girls out and raking in the cash—day in, day out. But by early summer the duo got worried that U.S. immigration authorities might stumble across their scheme. Reluctantly, they decided to release the girls. Three of them immediately returned to Latvia. The other two remained in the U.S., hooking up with love-struck clients.

But Gorr and Mishulovich knew they had latched on to a good thing and didn’t want to let it go. And so in November 1997 they flew to Minsk intending to recruit a second batch of women. This time, however, their ruse slammed into a brick wall when an astute visa officer at the American embassy smelled a rat and summarily rejected the women’s applications.

Back in Latvia, the official at the American embassy in Riga who had cleared the original tourist visas for the Latvian women ran into one of the girls soon after she had returned home. The young woman relayed her incredible story. Enraged, the officer filed a full report with the U.S. State Department, and the matter was passed on to the FBI.

The case was assigned to special agent Michael Brown, a six-foot-two, 225-pound detective straight out of central casting. The agent, who had been working on the Eastern European Crime Squad, immediately ran a trace on Mishulovich and Gorr. The trace showed that both men, now naturalized American citizens, had emigrated from Russia in the early 1980s with their parents.

“They came at the time there was a huge influx of Russian Jews into the United States,” Brown said. “Both families sought and obtained refugee status, claiming they were persecuted by the Soviets because they were Jewish.”

With the evidence in place, the partners were picked up and charged in September 1998. Following their arrest, Gorr “lawyered up” and kept his mouth shut. Mishulovich was another story. He just kept yapping.

“I talked to him at length,” Brown recounted. “He’s a very intelligent, well-spoken man. There’s no doubt about it. He was not an idiot. I deal with mostly gangs and drugs and uneducated and ignorant people. His English was phenomenal. But if you look at the facts, well, he’s one repugnant person.”

What bothered him most was that Mishulovich wasn’t the least bit remorseful about the way he had treated the women. “If anything, he acted like he’s almost aristocracy. He’d say ‘They’re scum. They’re peasants. Spit on them. Don’t take their word for anything. They’re Baltic whores.’ That was the term he used to describe them.”

Mishulovich was a manipulative sleaze to the very end, hoping his cooperation would net him a lower jail sentence. Clearly, his objective was to foist the brunt of the blame on

Gorr, who he maintained was the brains behind the entire operation. Gorr, meanwhile, planned to paint himself as a naive bit player.

According to Brown,

One of my theories on this is that Gorr was a very clever and calculating man and that he needed a fall guy or a front man, so that if anything ever did blow up, someone else would take the heat for it. That’s why he recruited Serguie, who in turn found Mishulovich. They needed somebody to go out to Riga and recruit the girls. Somebody to sign their name on the visa applications as to being the sponsor for the girls. Somebody’s house where the girls had to stay. Somebody to interact with them and take them to and from the clubs. Somebody to keep them in line if they got out of line. Somebody to do the dirty work.

Mishulovich was that somebody, and the only reason that Gorr stepped up is because Serguie got deported and he wasn’t gonna get any more of the money unless he had direct contact with Mishulovich.

The FBI’s case rested largely on the shoulders of one key prosecution witness—the twenty-two-year-old Latvian woman who had recounted her story to the U.S. embassy official in Riga. As Brown recalled,

She had guts. She had courage. If we didn’t have her testimony, the case never would have gone forward. This gal has had a lot of problems as a result of all this too. There was a lot of psychological trauma associated with all of this because she was beaten and abused. There were suicide attempts. It took me an awful long time to have her admit that there were sexual assaults that took place throughout the ordeal.

Brown said he interviewed all the girls. A couple of them decided not to cooperate. “There were a lot of reasons—fear for their families back home, distrust of law enforcement. Be mindful of the climate over there. It’s a former Soviet state, and there’s a high level of corruption over there. They equate the FBI with the KGB [the much-feared former Soviet secret police].”

After a ten-day trial in December 1999, the jury found Gorr guilty on four counts of visa fraud for helping to get the Latvian women into the U.S. under false pretenses. Wiping tears from his eyes, a jubilant Gorr hugged his attorney. He was acquitted of the far more serious charges of forcing the women into involuntary servitude. In late December 2001, the twenty-nine-year-old was sentenced to three years in prison and fined a measly $5000.

On February 13, 2002, Mishulovich stood before a judge for sentencing. He read a fifteen-minute statement, claiming that while he was guilty of being involved in “a horrible, disgusting, stupid business,” it was Gorr, not he, who had been the brains behind the scheme. The former “businessman” begged for “a second chance.” The court didn’t buy it. Having pled guilty to a raft of charges, including involuntary servitude and conspiracy to defraud the United States, he was sentenced to 112 months in the penitentiary.

THE CHICAGO CASE is a frightening example of just how easily low-life thugs can jump on the trafficking bandwagon. But it’s not only gutter trash like Mishulovich and Gorr who leech off naive and innocent women. The shocking arrest of a London doctor in 1999 showed just how widespread the trade has really become.

In 1994 Oksana Ryniekska graduated from medical school in Ukraine. At twenty-six, she soon realized that her life as a doctor in her native land didn’t offer the money or lifestyle she wanted and felt she was entitled to. She opted to leave and headed for England. But soon after her arrival the silver lining turned to lead. The money just wasn’t rolling in, and so she devised a plan to make handfuls of quick and easy cash. The newly minted doctor set up not a clinic but a brothel over a London dry-cleaning shop. For staff, she turned to the young women of her homeland, importing nine of them to work for her. Ryniekska told the women that she would help them obtain visas in order to enable them to study English. The only English they learned, however, was the sexual terminology required to understand and service their steady stream of clients. Needless to say, the money came rolling in, both from “in service” and from “home visits.” In only eight months, before being busted in an undercover sting, Ryniekska had raked in more than $210,000.