A man who dated a Russian “dominatrix” accused of poisoning her doppelganger with a sedative-laced cheesecake told jurors this week that Viktoria Nasyrova once drugged his fish and robbed him while on a date.
Ruben Borukhov, 54, testified in a Queens, New York, courtroom that he met Nasyrova through a dating website and that she invited him for dinner at her Brooklyn apartment.
RUSSIAN ‘DOMINATRIX’ ACCUSED OF POISONING LOOKALIKE WITH CHEESECAKE AND CHICKEN SOUP GOES ON TRIAL
“The thing I remember is getting up,” he told jurors. “We toasted, and I took two pieces of fish, and that’s it. It was like five minutes. I got knocked out. I don’t know what was going on. I still don’t remember.”
Borukhov said the next few weeks went by in a blur and that his memory is still patchy. He said he knew he went to the hospital twice but that his memory was blank after that.
But he said as he started to put the pieces together, he realized his new watch went missing and his American Express card had been fraudulently charged $2,600. He told the New York Post in 2017 that Nasyrova demanded he eat the fried fish she cooked almost immediately after he walked into her Sheepshead Bay apartment with roses, wine, and chocolates in hand.
Borukhov’s story is similar to what prosecutors argued Nasyrova did to her friend and eyelash stylist Olga Tsvyk. They claimed she carried out a “cold and calculated plan” to rob Tsvyk and steal her identity by feeding her a poisoned cheesecake and chicken soup.
“Evidence will show Olga Tsvyk was a pretty good lookalike for the defendant,” Assistant District Attorney Konstantinos Litourgis told jurors during her opening statement last week. She added that Tsvyk, who is from Ukraine, was an easy mark because she had no family in the United States to check in on her.
Nasyrova and Tsvyk met at a salon where Tsvyk worked in 2016.
Litourgis told jurors that investigators found Nasyrova’s DNA at the crime scene, including the box that the reportedly poisoned cheesecake came in.
“The DNA that was on that container belongs to Viktoria Nasyrova,” the prosecutor said. “So on top of everything you’re going to hear from civilian witnesses, you’re going to learn that there’s a cheesecake container that had Phenazepam in it and also had the defendant’s DNA on it.”
Phenazepam is a benzodiazepine drug that was developed in the Soviet Union in 1975. It is now largely produced in Russia and is used to treat mental disorders such as schizophrenia. It can cause death in some cases of overdose or if combined with other drugs.
Prosecutors allege that Nasyrova, 47, went to her friend’s house to bring her some tranquilizer-laced cheesecake. Tsvyk got sick almost immediately after having the cake and started to vomit and hallucinate. The next day, Nasyrova came back with chicken soup. After eating it, Tsvyk went into a coma.
Nasyrova pleaded not guilty. Her lawyer, Christopher Hoyt, told jurors that the trial is “not an open-and-shut case.”
“We are here today because Ms. Nasyrova is not guilty of these charges,” he said.
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In March 2017, Nasyrova was charged with attempted murder, burglary, attempted assault, assault, reckless endangerment, grand larceny, larceny, and possession of stolen property.
If convicted, she could spend 25 years in prison.
