This was hot news in North Carolina last month, but I suspect it never made it to cable news fixated every day, all day, on Donald Trump!
Here is the headline of a Department of Justice press release in December.
Five Foreign Nationals Indicted on Murder-For-Hire, Money Laundering, and Immigration Charges
The story of the Russian nationals, led by Leonid Teyf, 57, who lived in a mansion estimated to be worth $4 million in a posh section of Raleigh reads like a made-for-TV movie.
As the DOJ’s press release tells us, the Russians got rich by ripping off the Russian military. Teyf was a contractor hired to supply goods and services to the Russian military, but had devised a kickback scheme that netted him over $150 million over a two year period.
The DOJ alleges that he, and his fellow Russians in the US, set up various businesses through which they laundered what amounts to Putin’s money.
The gang, including Teyf’s wife Tatyana, 41, are also charged with immigration fraud as they tried to get another of their Russian pals in to the US.
Murder-for-hire plot!
But, the story got even juicier when Teyf allegedly believed his wife was having an affair with his housekeeper’s son (remember made-for-TV potential here!).
Local news reports were buzzing about that tidbit. According to the DOJ,
During the course of the investigation into the money laundering charges, a Confidential Source utilized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation learned that Leonid Teyf came to believe that his wife, Tatyana Teyf, was having an affair with another man. Leonid Teyf recruited the Confidential Source to assist in planning for the man’s murder. The murder was to take place here in the United States or in Russia after they conspired to have the man deported.
If found guilty, Leonid Teyf could get 20 years and Tatyana and their other accomplices could get 10 each.
The feds will seek to recover $39 million and then here is the clincher for them, “Each defendant will likely face the prospect of removal from the United States after their terms of imprisonment.”
Why not just deport them after they are convicted and save us the expense of keeping them behind bars?
Of course the first question that came to my mind when I read the news, widely reported in North Carolina, was: how did this bunch of Russian mobsters get in here in the first place? We hear mumbo-jumbo all the time about coming to America the right way? What is that? If they hadn’t made some dumb mistakes, would these mobsters just have wormed their way to US citizenship?
Could be the new Godfather.