LAWSUIT BY RUSSIAN SAYS GARDENS MAN A RACKETEER
Russian immigrant in real estate dealings showed ‘pattern of racketeering activity,’ 21-count suit says.
While Tamara Filippova sat in her house in Siberia, her sonin-law in Palm Beach Gardens used her name to create a real estate world that defrauded her of more than $8 million, her lawyers say in a federal lawsuit filed this past week.
The 21-count, 158-page suit against Ilia Mogilevsky, which cites the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), claims “a pattern of racketeering activity” by Mogilevsky since 2007 “which has caused millions of dollars of losses to not only plaintiff but to others.”
It says Mogilevsky “has a long history and persistence for committing real estate frauds.”
The lawsuit also asks for injunctions to keep him from disposing of scores of contested properties in Palm Beach County and across South Florida.
The filing is the latest legal trouble for both Mogilevsky, 40, and his wife Natalia, 39. On Nov. 11, she was arrested, charged with biting her husband’s wrist in front of the couple’s children, ages 12 and 3, at their Ballen-Isles Country Club home. The domestic battery charges are pending. The couple, immigrants from Russia, had filed for divorce nine days earlier, on Nov. 2.
The previous year, the two had settled a Palm Beach County Circuit Court lawsuit by Gustav “Gus” Renny, himself a frequent investor and entrepreneur.
Renny, who’d been a partner with Ilia in a nightclub at 251 Sunrise Ave. in Palm Beach, was also a partner with the couple and relatives in at least 49 Florida corporations, most of them set up
to flip South Florida real estate. Renny claimed that Ilia Mogilevsky hid most or all of 500-plus transactions from oversight, stiffing him out of what should have been 50 percent of profits. The couple later countersued Renny.
Gary Rosen, attorney for the mother-in-law, said Thursday he intends to forwarded his findings to the U.S. attorney for possible criminal investigations.
While Filippova’s suit lists her daughter Natalia as a defendant, and alleges she helped her husband mislead her mother, Rosen said that Natalia “was duped by Ilia.”
And Stuart Kaplan, who represents Natalia in her domestic-battery case, said she plans to countersue him in federal court, “now that we see the breadth of this alleged fraudulent activity.”
No local criminal charges ever have been filed against either Ilia or Natalia Mogilevsky as a result of any of the real estate dealings.
The new federal lawsuit repeats many allegations made both by Renny’s lawsuit and by Natalia Mogilevsky’s divorce filing. In it, she said she was a stay-at-home mom, at the insistence of her husband, who “has been secretive about his income, financial dealing, assets and liabilities.”