In October 1996, Alex Mishulovich went to Latvia to pick up women.
Mishulovich: Well, I don’t think I am that ugly…
G: All right. How long have you been a ladies’ man?
Mishulovich spoke in Russian, something of a handicap in a nation that only recently threw off the Soviet yoke, but he had Pede in tow. She would offer reassurance in Latvian, saying she was Mishulovich’s girlfriend, this was a wonderful opportunity, and she would be taking up the offer herself. “He was very convincing,” a woman named Agita later testified. “I’d say he was persistent because he walked three blocks down the street with me…just talking, talking, talking.” (Agita was a witness in the case of U.S. v. Vadim Gorr, the transcript of which is the source of all testimony cited in this article. In that case, Mishulovich’s five recruits were identified solely by their first names in order to spare them further humiliation and embarrassment. The women have thus been difficult to locate. Requests for interviews passed to them through the U.S. attorney’s office have been consistently declined.)
At the time he sat down with Linda and Agnessa, Mishulovich had already secured visas for Agita, Tatiana, and Vika, but he’d aroused the curiosity of U.S. consular officer Robert Tatge in the process. Tatge was taken aback when Mishulovich showed up a second time with two additional women. “He was extremely suspicious of this whole business with the girls,” Mishulovich recalled on the witness stand. “So the first question that came out of his mouth was ‘Alex, what is going on with these girls? Tell me the truth.’ I looked at him and I said, ‘Nothing. It is all legitimate. These girls are coming to the States as friends of mine. I am simply doing them a favor.’”
Mishulovich’s account of the confrontation was similar to Linda’s, though he denied saying he would cut her face. “I called her a couple of bad names. And I said, ‘Remember, Linda, that you are playing with the wrong guy.’ I said that you know what happens to people who don’t behave. You are in Latvia, don’t forget, and you have known of cases where other girls have had problems, where their heads were cut off.”
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Serguie Tcharouchine is now a fugitive. Alex Mishulovich’s account of the trafficking scheme’s origins is thus the only one available, and it should be noted that Mishulovich has admitted to lying under oath. On the witness stand, Mishulovich claimed that Tcharouchine was the mastermind, that he presented the idea when the two men bumped into each other in a store that sold stolen goods, and that they sealed the deal over dinner in a Thai restaurant. According to Mishulovich, Tcharouchine had some experience in this line of work, but he wasn’t an American citizen, and he allegedly felt that Mishulovich, who was, would be useful as a sponsor for the women’s visas. In addition, Mishulovich spoke English well, was a good salesman, and could be quite the ladies’ man.
