By JOHN ANNESE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 04, 2019 | 12:03 AM
He won’t be wearing his $1,500 belt buckle for a while.
A violent Russian mobster who spent his money on high-top Yeezy sneakers and an over-the-top expensive Hermes belt buckle was sentenced to more than 16 years behind bars for gun-running, arson, loansharking, gambling and extortion.
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Leonid (Lenny) Gershman (right) and Aleksey Tsvetkov (left) have ties to an organized crime syndicate known as Thieves in Law, according to authorities. (Courtesy of Brooklyn Federal Prosecutor)
Leonid (Lenny) Gershman, one of the leaders of an Eastern European organized crime syndicate that terrorized Brooklyn for six years, learned his fate Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.
Gershman, 36, and partner Aleksey Tsvetkov, were convicted on racketeering charges after a three-week federal trial last year. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced Gershman to 196 months behind bars.
The defendants, both of Brooklyn, orchestrated a crime spree in the heavily-Russian Brighton Beach section, along with neighboring Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay, from 2011 to 2017.
In 2016, the duo hired two men to set fire to a Coney Island building that hosted a competing high-stakes poker game, and the blaze nearly proved fatal. Firefighters had to pull a young boy and a second person from the burning building, and the rescue was so harrowing that one of the firefighters needed surgery to recover from injuries.
They also used a pistol to shatter the teeth of a man suspected of robbing their marijuana stash house, and once reached out to a group of Russian mobsters known as “Thieves in Law” to track down the father of a man who owed them more than $40,000.
The father, who was found in Moscow, acknowledged his son was living in Israel, where gangsters tracked him down, Gershman said during a wiretapped phone call.
Gershman and his criminal buddies lived well, wearing high fashion and fancy watches, driving a Porsche and, in Tsevkov’s case, receiving a brand new motorcycle, wrapped in a bow, as a birthday gift.
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John Annese has covered crime and breaking news for the New York Daily News since 2015. Before that, he reported on crime, courts, and the Staten Island opioid epidemic for the Staten Island Advance. He is the recipient of several New York State Associated Press Association Awards.