Man accused of leading ‘thieves in law’ pleads guilty to extortion

Was Viktor Zelinger a gangster or a desperate refugee?

The answer, after a hearing Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn, appeared to be that he was both.

Mr Zelinger, 45, pleaded guilty to extortion, admitting that he had helped run an illegal gambling club and threatened debtors to make them pay.

When he was arrested in Switzerland in 2022, prosecutors said he led a ruthless gang linked to an Eastern European mafia group known as Thieves in Law that wreaked havoc in the Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods and Coney Island in Brooklyn.

The string of charges against him included directing an arson attack in May 2016 at a residential building on Voorhies Avenue where a high-stakes poker game was being held. The fire nearly killed two teenagers and injured a firefighter, prosecutors said.

The game competed with his own illegal gambling spot on Coney Island Avenue, where players received free alcohol, cocaine and massages, according to court documents. Months later, as investigators closed in, Mr. Zelinger left the country for good.

A grand jury indictment unsealed in October included charges against Mr. Zelinger and eight others; two other suspects were later added to the case. All were convicted or pleaded guilty to racketeering and related charges.

But Mr. Zelinger’s lawyer, Susan Kellman, painted a dramatically different story about his life, arguing that he was a devoted father whose life was turned upside down by illness and war.

In a motion filed last year, she wrote that after returning to his native Ukraine in 2016, he married a woman who was diagnosed with a brain tumor after the birth of the last of their three children.

When war broke out, it became impossible to find treatment and she died of her illness, Ms. Kellman wrote. Mr. Zelinger was subsequently displaced by fighting alongside his children, who were then ages 6, 4 and 2. The family lived in their car and traveled at night to avoid the fighting, eventually fleeing to Slovenia before heading to Switzerland, she wrote.

“If he is the boss or has ties to the Eastern European mafia, whatever that may be, then it would have seemed to me that he would have had a much easier time living abroad for his life and that of his family. fluid,” Ms. Kellman said. said during a hearing last year.

“But there was no one to help him.”

Once they settled in Switzerland, Mr. Zelinger received a phone call telling him to report to a local police station to register the children at school, according to his report. But it was a trap. When he arrived, he was arrested and the children were placed in an orphanage. But “miraculously,” in Ms. Kellman’s words, they were saved by the chief rabbi of Zurich, who arranged for them to be sent to their grandmother in Brooklyn.

Mr. Zelinger’s family was not present at Thursday’s hearing, which lasted 90 minutes as Judge Vera M. Scanlon dissected the complicated plea deal. Mr. Zelinger pleaded guilty to extortion, but admitted to having played a role in other crimes, allowing them to be taken into account in the judge’s sentencing decision. He wore prison khakis and a dark, closely cropped beard during the hearing and was assisted by a Russian interpreter.

The maximum sentence on the charges under federal sentencing guidelines would be 20 years. But the prosecutor in the case, Victor Zapana of the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, said Thursday that he and the defense had agreed to recommend a sentence of five to six years. That hearing is scheduled for July 18 before Judge Brian M. Cogan.

Mr. Zelinger, who moved to Brooklyn in 2001 and later became a citizen, will likely lose his U.S. citizenship and be deported once his sentence is completed.