Desperation Preceded Grisly Finds

Federal authorities laid out their account Thursday of a botched kidnap-for-ransom scheme they said stretched from Los Angeles to Dubai to Moscow, ending in an icy green reservoir in the rugged folds of the Sierra Nevada’s gold country.

Along the way, law enforcement sources said, interest in the case rose to the highest levels of government, with Georgian President Eduard A. Shevardnadze--the former Soviet foreign minister and a friend of the family of one apparent victim--reportedly appealing for help to former President George Bush. As many as 150 FBI agents ultimately were involved in the probe.

With six suspects in custody and a seventh at large, U.S. Atty. John S. Gordon in Los Angeles described a chain of desperate telephone calls, six-figure money transfers and faxed ransom demands that led agents to the suspected kidnappers--and then to New Melones Lake, where four bodies were found earlier this week.

Those bodies were identified Thursday, bringing unwelcome but not unexpected confirmation to family members who, in some cases, had been waiting for word of their loved ones since December. An additional body, that of a San Fernando Valley real estate developer, was found floating in the same reservoir in October.

Authorities believe that the four people whose bodies were found this week--two aspiring film producers, an electronics entrepreneur and a bookkeeper--were kidnapped by a ring of Eastern European criminals in the San Fernando Valley, held for ransom and ultimately killed, their weighted bodies dumped into the reservoir.

So far, none of those in custody have been charged with murder. The kidnapping charges refer to only two of the victims, George Safiev and Alexander Umansky. But authorities did not rule out the possibility of filing additional charges.

“We are looking at all five victims who were recovered to determine if there is a connection among them and, by extension, to the suspects,” said Special Agent Matthew McLaughlin, spokesman for the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

All six men in custody have pleaded not guilty. They were arrested over a five-week span from Feb. 11 to March 18.

The criminal scheme, as described by Gordon and in an FBI affidavit, involved ransom demands faxed from Russia, asking for money to be transferred to bank accounts in Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. There, authorities say, three Russian men were allegedly involved in receiving the money and routing it to banks in Latvia and the United States. Some money came through Moscow, a law enforcement source there said.

Two of those men have been arrested and are in federal custody. The third is still being sought and is believed to be overseas.

In the chronology laid out by authorities, the FBI launched its investigation shortly after the Dec. 13 kidnapping of Umansky, 35, who lived in Sherman Oaks and owned an auto electronics business in North Hollywood. The morning after his disappearance, his father--unaware of the kidnapping--discovered three ransom messages on Umansky’s office fax machine. Over the next two days, Umansky repeatedly called his brother, Michael, begging him to “take this seriously” and raise the ransom money however he could, according to the FBI.

On Dec. 17, his family wired approximately $90,000 to a bank in New York, which sent it to a bank in Dubai, in partial payment of the ransom demand for $234,628.

In telephone conversations over the next 10 days--dozens of them monitored by the FBI--the family refused to turn over any more money unless they could speak to Umansky, authorities said. After the kidnappers refused that request, the family wired another $145,000 to an account in Dubai.

During that investigation, Gordon said, “FBI agents learned that other Russian immigrants were missing and may have been kidnapped.”

Those included Rita Pekler, a 39-year-old businesswoman who had bookkeeping and other businesses in West Hollywood. She was reported missing Dec. 5, and her body was among those identified Thursday. The next developments were the alleged kidnappings of Safiev and Nick Kharabadze, a 29-year-old aspiring filmmaker whose mother is a prominent member of the Georgian emigre community in Los Angeles and is said by family members to be a friend of Shevardnadze.

Kharabadze had recently established Matador Media Inc., a film production company, with Safiev, 37, who had reportedly become wealthy in the rough-and-tumble world of Russian banking. Both men disappeared on Jan. 20. Kharabadze had been planning to attend a party associated with the Golden Globe awards, which were held that night.

In subsequent days, authorities said, Safiev’s business manager received phone calls from Safiev telling him to transfer nearly $1 million from a business account, which he did, and $4 million to the bearer of a letter signed by Safiev. The latter amount was never paid.

During the next week, friends and employees of the two men received several phone calls from them. During some of the calls, Safiev and Kharabadze said they were in Las Vegas and “everything was fine,” but would not say how they could be reached, according to the FBI affidavit. In one call, a friend, speaking in the Georgian language, asked Safiev if he had been kidnapped.

“Yes,” he said, according to the affidavit.

Four days after the abduction, in one of a string of transactions that led authorities to the suspects, an employee of Matador Media received a phone call from a large New York electronics retailer, confirming an $8,600 purchase of video equipment on Safiev’s credit card. A copy of the card had been faxed to the store. The FBI said it was later able to trace the fax to the Encino residence of Iouri Mikhel, one of the suspects.

According to one source close to the investigation, Kharabadze’s family at one point prevailed upon Shevardnadze to contact former President Bush, with the hope it would add more urgency to the investigation.

Colleagues of Safiev and Kharabadze said they believe the FBI had been aggressive in investigating the case. However, some relatives of the other victims have expressed frustration with what they believe to have been a slow initial response to the kidnappings. Among the most vocal has been the widow of Myer Muscatel, who disappeared in October. He was found days later but was not publicly identified until Tuesday.

“I was haunted by it on a daily basis,” said Nancy Shapiro Muscatel. “I knew my husband was harmed but I never felt this case was being worked aggressively enough.”

More details emerged Thursday about the suspects, some of whom displayed signs of affluence.

One of them Petro “Peter” Krylov, 29, of West Hollywood, had worked for Umansky but was fired several months before the latter’s disappearance. However, Krylov’s attorney said late Thursday that the two had remained on good terms, and Krylov’s wife said Umansky was planning to hire her husband back.

Another suspect, Mikhel, 36, was described as a real estate investor who, in late 2000, bought two adjoining condominiums in Sherman Oaks for $429,000. A third, Jurijus Kadamovas, 35, of Encino, bought a $714,000 home in Sherman Oaks in July 2001. He has also lived in Encino and Hawaii. Mikhel and Kadamovas co-own an aquarium shop in Sherman Oaks.

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Times staff writers William Overend, Massie Ritsch, Eric Bailey, Andrew Blankstein and Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.