Gardens woman accused of biting her future ex will avoid time in jail
WEST PALM BEACH — Natalia Mogilevsky, a player in a million-dollar dispute between her estranged husband and mother, is expected to spend no time in jail on charges that she bit him in November at their Ballenisles Country Club home in Palm Beach Gardens.
In front of Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Debra Moses Stephen son Tuesday, Mogilevsky agreed to pretrial diversion on the first-degree misdemeanor domestic battery charge. The 39-yearold mother of two could have gone to jail for a year.
She is involved in a federal legal battle over millions in properties that her husband, Ilia Mogilevsky, 40, is alleged to have stolen from her mother. The Mogilevskys are immigrants from Russia.
On Jan. 16, lawyers for Ilia Mogilevsky’s mother-in-law, Tamara Filippova of eastern Siberia, filed a 21-count lawsuit in U.S. District Court.
Citing the federal Civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the suit claims Ilia Mogilevsky, in collusion with local business partners, lawyers, notaries public and others also named as defendants, defrauded Filippova out of more than $8 million by forging documents to move dozens of Florida properties to his name from hers.
Lawyers for Ilia Mogilevsky, in a “motion to dismiss” filed Feb. 6 in U.S. District Court, called the 158-page lawsuit “baseless.”
Filippova lawyer Gary Rosen has said he intends to forward all his findings about alleged misdoings by Ilia Mogilevsky to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for possible criminal investigations. And while Filippova’s suit lists Natalia Mogilevsky as a defendant, and alleges she helped her husband mislead her mother, Rosen has said Natalia “was duped by Ilia.”
Stuart Kaplan, the attorney who represents Natalia Mogilevsky in her domestic-battery case, has said she plans to countersue her husband in federal court.
Natalia and Ilia Mogilevsky filed for divorce Nov. 2. On Nov. 11, Natalia was arrested, charged with biting her husband’s wrist in front of the couple’s children, then 12 and 3.
At the time of his client’s arrest, Kaplan said the two fought because Ilia Mogilevsky had taken Natalia’s cellphones, obtained bank account passwords from them and cleaned out the couple’s accounts of $110,000.
In the deal struck Tuesday, Natalia Mogilevsky does not make a formal plea, but prosecutors agree to drop the charges if she attends eight hours of anger-management classes, pays $50 in court fees and otherwise stays out of trouble, defense attorney Elizabeth Parker said.