All language subtitles for The.Curious.Case.of.S02E02.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH[EZTVx.to]

[orchestral music playing]

[Kevin]
She did eat cheesecake.

Whether it was poison,
I don't know, but she did

eat cheesecake.
-[Olga] It wasn't, like,

so delicious
as she advertised before.

She's within minutes of dying.

[Stella]
Olga and Viktoria, they was
kind of style the same.

They both was, like, curvy.

There was a look-alike.

-Like, you know, it's --
-I don't think so.

-I don't see it.
-No, I see it.

There was a look-alike.

[Dino] She thinks that she's
the smartest person

in the room at all times.

[Herman] She doesn't have
a degree in pharmacology.

She doesn't know
what she's doing.

She's just haphazardly
poisoning people.

[Kevin] She's wanted for murder
in Russia.

She's very dangerous.

[theme music playing]

[Kevin] I'm very particular
about my gear,

the type of gear that I have,
where my gear is.

I shouldn't have to look
to see where gear is.

So I just have, um...

fresh spare magazines.
I have my flashlight.

I have a combat application
tourniquet in the back.

I have handcuffs.

I have a level-three
retention holster.

So that just because
we're dealing with children,

you don't want any issues where
kids are trying to grab at it

because some of the young guys
do get

sort of fascinated by it.

I did 20 years
with the New York City
Police Department.

Now I'm sitting here
in a playground.

My name is Kevin Rodgers.

I'm a former detective
with the NYPD.

I retired in July of 2021,
and I moved

to Middletown, Delaware.

I'm now a constable at Lorewood
Grove Elementary School.

I like to be that the first
law enforcement touch they have

is me, meaning it's not...

the police coming to your house
because there was an argument

or a car stop
or something like that.

I liked them to be,
"Hey, the first cop that I ever

"dealt with was in my school.

"And he was cool as heck,
and he got along

with all of us,
and he was awesome."

On September 2nd, 2016, it was
your quote-unquote normal day

up in the detective squad,
thinking about what we're gonna

get to eat and having some
coffee and things like that.

But I remember when the phone
rang, everything changed.

The phone call was from patrol,
just stating that they had

a grand larceny.

The victim, she's missing items
from her apartment, cash,

jewelry, and identification.

So I said, "OK, you know,
put me down as notified,"

because something like that,
a grand larceny,

isn't something
that we wouldn't jump to.

So I probably wouldn't have
gotten the case had I not

received another call
from the lieutenant,

which is unheard of.

He tells us that she's just
out of it.

"She's not drunk,
and she doesn't seem

"like she's under the influence
of anything, but she just seems

"just extremely groggy
and just out of it.

And would you mind coming
out and talk to her?"

I said, "Sure."

I'll be honest, I'm cynical.

A lot of times it could be
an insurance job

or it could just be
they were careless

and they don't wanna take
blame for it,

so they say, "I'll just say
somebody stole it."

I'm thinking, this woman's
full of it.

We're gonna get there
for two minutes.

We're gonna prove
this woman wrong.

We're gonna punch holes
in her story.

We tell her she's lying,
tell her, "Have a nice day,"

so we can get back to the office
and investigate actual crimes.

We walk in through a side door.

There's a bunch of cops there,
still sort of scratching

their heads as far
as what's going on.

The victim is 35-year-old
Olga Tsvyk.

She's an immigrant
from Ukraine,

and she's a esthetician.
She does eyelashes.

She just seemed, like,
not lucid in any stretch

of the word.

Her eyes were not darty,
but just very sort

of not following us
with her eyes

as quickly as a normal person.

It was very strange,
very strange.

Now, cops are trained
in determining

when somebody's
under the influence.

She was not exhibiting
the telltale signs of being

under the influence of alcohol.

She did not have
dilated pupils, which could be

an indicator of certain drugs
in her system.

The situation with Olga was
very puzzling.

[Kevin]
The lesson I learned that day
is that women will go

and they will pay

to have extra eyelashes
inserted into their eyelids.

She's saying that, "I'm missing
about $1,700 of cash."

In my line of work,
I have to be direct.

And unfortunately, if it offends
somebody, I'm sorry.

But these are the questions
that I have to ask.

And one of the questions
I did ask her several times was,

you know, you do eyelashes
every once in a while.

You live in this
really nice neighborhood.

How else are you
supporting yourself?

But she was very adamant.
Like, "I understand

this looks bad.
I'm telling the truth."

In my cynical view,
she wants to make this

out to be that she's a victim
of some type of crime

when she just wanted
to stage something.

Other people had to be
interviewed with this case

because I feel like it was
getting a little bit bigger

at that time.

So I said, "Let me talk
to Stella, her boss,"

who was the one that was one
of the people that found her.

♪♪

My name is Stella Stepanya.

I'm owner of the Salon
Estelle Hair Studio.

We do styling, lashes, facial.

My clients and my coworkers,
I feel like it's my family.

I'm like their mom,

and they are like my kids.

Olga was very nice girl.

She was doing the most popular,
pretty lashes at that time.

Olga was good to the salon,

and salon was good
for Olga as well.

♪♪

Olga was always on time.

If it's anything,
she always texts me.

That's why when Olga did not
show up that day,

it was very surprise.

I was worried, but I was
thinking, maybe she went out,

maybe she's not feeling well,
but nothing serious.

So after work, I went
to the dinner,

and I had a phone call

from Olga.

There was her neighbor.
She called me saying,

"Your coworker, she's acting
like not normal.

"She's saying something
not normal.

Come and see what we're
gonna do together."

I walked up the stairs,
and I see Olga

was leaning in a bed
with the heat on.

There was a lot of pills
in the floor, in the bed.

She dressed with, like,
very sexy lingerie.

Her face was swollen.
Her body was swollen.

Her arm was swollen.

Maybe something happens
with her.

She got upset.

I said, "She probably wanna
kill herself."

Ambulance say, "If you guys
gonna call in

five more minutes later, she
will be probably passed away."

They took the blood work.
They see she's not on her drugs.

I said, "I know the girl.
She doesn't even smoke."

[Kevin]
The hospital actually does
a lumbar puncture,

a spinal tap.

Both of those tests came back
negative for any type

of psychotropic or crazy
narcotic drug.

I was expecting to find
some type of an opiate,

a benzo, a Xanax, or a Klonopin,
or something that would

put her in this state.

If she's in this bad shape,
blood work, urinalysis,

spinal taps, something is gonna
pop where that,

"Oh, she had this
in her system."

Nothing.

OK, so this is weird, right?

I mean, her toxicology screen
is clear, and there's no

medically known reason.
She wasn't having a stroke.

There's no discernible,
identifiable drugs

in her system that would have
caused this.

So why did she almost die?
What caused it?

[Kevin]
Stella goes to Olga's house.

One of the things
that she points out to me

in sort of passing, saying,
"Oh, and by the way,

her room was 107 degrees."

The heat was on full blast,
and that in order for her

to turn the heat off, she had
to look for the remote control

which controlled the unit,
which was thrown under the bed.

Somebody intentionally turned
the heat up all the way

in late August in New York

and didn't want someone
to turn it off.

NYPD are great officers
and detectives, OK?

They're so experienced.

This is a city of multiple
millions of people.

They see everything,
and they are really puzzled.

[Kevin]
I went to Olga's house thinking,
"We're gonna be back

in the office having dinner
in 20 minutes"

Now I'm in the house two hours,
three hours, and thinking,

"I think something
actually happened."

Either I'm dealing
with a complete sociopath,

or she's telling the truth.

[Stella]
You remember you went next day
to the hospital?

I asked you to go
to the hospital.

I don't think I ever saw Olga
in that situation before.

She was swollen.

She didn't even look like Olga
at that time.

When you saw her,
she was already

a little better,
because night before,

when I took her to the hospital,
she was really weird,

swollen even more bigger
than you saw her the next day.

-Really?
-[Stella] Mm.

I don't know.
That was the --

I'm never gonna forget
those days.

[Stella] She's doing good.
She's doing good.

Thank God.

♪♪

[Olga] My name is Olga Tsvyk,
and I'm an esthetician.

I have my own studio
in West Palm Beach.

Beauty industry, it's like
my passion since I was little.

It's so interesting
how Eastern European women,

they are all in beauty,
isn't it?

I think we are --
it's in our DNA.

-[woman] Oh, that's true.
-Yeah.

I was born in Ukraine.

In 2013, I decided to come
to United States.

It was exciting 'cause I never
been in New York.

It was my first time.

And also the same time,
I know that I'm not going to

maybe see my family
for a long time.

Yeah, it was a little,
like, stressful.

We are on 108th Street.

Since I lived here,
it, uh, five -- five years.

In Forest Hills is like
big Russian community.

It was easy because you can
speak people

who understand you.

Ukrainians, many of them,
they speak Russian also,

and Olga spoke
Ukrainian and Russian.

This is from my...

hometown.
We have trees of the pears.

I used to live
around the corner.

I used to live there,
like, five years,

and also where I almost died.

After I get back
from the hospital,

Detective Rodgers came
to my place.

They trying to figure out
what happened.

-They don't trust me.
-[Beth] So this is a mystery.

And Detective Rodgers,
he starts to treat this

almost like
a missing person case.

But the person is not missing,
just her memories are missing.

So he says, "OK, what happened
up to the point

you lose your memory?"

♪♪

Olga tells me that she received
a call from a client

that was in dire need
of her eyelashes due to madar.

She tells me, "I go to Mexico,
please, please, please,"

and I think, "OK, oh, my God,
OK, just come,

and I'm gonna do
your eyelashes."

It takes, like,
ten minutes for me.

Then she called me,
and she say, "I wanna get, uh,

"some cheesecake for you
in some famous bakery

in Brooklyn,"

and she told me the name,
I forgot.

She brought box with the pieces
of cheesecakes, and you can see

that one is missing, you know.

So she say, "It's so delicious,"
so I just...

took one.

She ate one piece
and right away another one.

I think, "OK, maybe she's
hungry," you know.

And she just left
one piece for me.

It wasn't like

so delicious
as she advertised before.

[Kevin] She eats the last piece
and she then tells me

she immediately feels
extremely nauseous

and begins to wildly vomit
on the floor.

I feel like I'm
losing consciousness,

and, um...

it's -- it's horrible feeling.

And I remember she went
to the bathroom

and she bring the paper towel.

And this is last
what I remember.

People ask me if I see
some lights in the, you know.

But I don't remember
anything, so.

I just sleeping, I think.

[Kevin]
Olga woke up from her stupor
on September 1st of 2016,

about three days later.

[Olga] The next thing I know,
I'm in the hospital room.

I was feeling very weak.
I have huge headache.

I'm trying to get up,
and I feel like, uh, dizzy.

I know that Stella, she picked
me up from the hospital.

She bring me home,
but I don't remember anything.

She helped me to eat.
She helped me to drink water.

She helped me go
to the bathroom,

to take a shower, everything.

You're like a person who
learning how to work again.

I discovered that $3,000
or $4,000 was missing,

my purse, my perfumes,
some of my clothes was missing.

[Kevin] Then she tells me
that her passport is missing.

Also missing is her work visa
that has her photograph on it.

At that point, all I have is
just a name.

"This is the last person I saw."

The name of this client was
Viktoria Nasyrova.

[Olga] Viktoria I met
through my client.

She came from the Brooklyn
to Queens to get her eyelashes

and become more often and often.

We were not friends.

We had like
a friendly conversation.

You know, when you work
with people, you become

as a therapist, you know,
and they came

and they tell their stories.

[Stella]
Olga and Viktoria, there was
kind of style the same.

They're both was, like, curvy.
There was a look-alike.

-Like, you know, it's --
-I don't think so.

I don't see it.
Honestly, I don't see it.

No, I see it.
There was a look-alike.

You know, in real life,
we don't look alike at all.

But of some of the picture,
you can say, "Yeah,

they look alike," you know?

As far as looking
for Viktoria, I didn't have

a date of birth.
I didn't have an address.

I didn't have
a cell phone number.

The cell phone was dead.
So I had nothing.

We didn't even know
if Viktoria Nasyrova

even existed.

These are my facts,
these are my circumstances.

What do I have?
Nothing.

And then we found
another victim.

Doctor says, if you be
by the water, by ocean water,

you stay here for a month,
your health is gonna start

be improving.
-[woman] Has it been improving?

I...

[woman] How do you feel?

I feel great.
I don't know.

[woman]
How does it compare to Queens?

[Ruben]
Oh, you cannot compare that.

You cannot compare to Queens,
because Queens is Queens.

♪♪

I'm Ruben Borukhov.
I am from Tajikistan.

I was looking for hustle,
always, you name it.

I worked everywhere.

I had a shoe repair,
cell phone business,

dry cleaners,

and now I have a smoke shop.

This is my king of clouds.

Me and my friend, we tried
to open up another place,

and something went wrong,
and then I end up here.

I've been here 10 months.

I met a lot of people,
good people, bad people,

all kind of people,
but my memories look -- losing,

I'm losing memories.

It all started in 2016,
when I got poisoned.

♪♪

2016, I had a girlfriend.
We broke up,

and then I start trying
to find a new girlfriend.

I was looking for a wife
to have kids.

I went on the Russian dating
sites because I'm Russian,

and it's easy to communicate
if you speak same language.

I met this lady.

Her name is Anna,
and we were talking,

and I like the way she sound.

We decided to meet her
by her house.

She's gonna make
something to eat.

I was excited, of course.
I got the flowers, wine.

She opens the door, and I see
no furniture in there.

It was only a bed, no nothing.

I was like, "Why is it
like that?" She said,

"My roommate just leaved,"
and I was like, "OK."

Yeah, it looks fishy,
but I came on a date.

So what can I expect?

I wasn't concerned about that.

I don't know if she cooked
or she bought it.

She said, "Let's eat,
it's getting cold."

I took one bite, two bites,
and I was like,

"Something is wrong."
I got up, like,

that's all I remember.
I got up, fix up my -- my thing,

and that's it.
I don't remember nothing else.

I never drink wine so much,

but they fall for it.

[Ruben] I don't know.

I saw the video from my store,
I was there sitting,

talking, blacked-out.

It's not me, you know.
I just was like a...

like a zombie there.

[Beth]
An employee of Rubens actually
took video that day.

He has no recollection
of any of this.

Not being inside
his dry cleaners, nothing.

It wasn't until two
or three weeks later,

when he had recovered
a bit of his memory,

that he realized
he had been robbed.

[Ruben] This woman, Anna,

she did a good job on me.

The hospital, they didn't find
no nothing.

They were wondering themselves
why it's nothing there.

They said, "What kind of drugs
he's using?"

[woman] Hi Ruben.

I don't know.

[Kevin] I get a phone call
from Brooklyn

stating we have a poisoning
with gram arsenic.

It's the same crime,
but the tox report

came back clean.

It turns out I was not
the only one

looking for Viktoria Nasyrova.

There's an official warrant
for Viktoria Nasyrova's arrest.

[Herman] Hey there.
What's going on?

Can I have one
of your best pretzels, please?

-Salt.
-[seller] Salt?

Yeah, I don't wanna get
too fancy.

-OK?
-Nice, perfect.

You're all right.
Thank you.

My name is Herman Weisberg.

I spent 20 years in the NYPD.

I retired in 2010, and I formed
a private investigative

security consulting firm.

We've worked
missing persons cases,

suicides that may be homicides,
homicides that may be suicides.

In 2016, I was retained
by a woman named Nadia Ford

to locate and assist
in the apprehension

of a Russian fugitive
that was wanted for a murder

and was walking around
in Brooklyn

like nothing had ever happened,
Viktoria Nasyrova.

There was a red notice
for murder issued by Interpol.

In April 2015,
Russian police had found

the remains of Nadia's mom.

Her mom's life savings was gone,
all of her valuables,

family heirlooms.

Traffic cams had picked
up photographs

of Viktoria's vehicle.

When I studied the pictures,
it was obviously Viktoria,

but there was also a figure
next to her.

And the picture's blurry,
but I thought it was

a pretty good chance that that
was unfortunately Nadia's mom.

Viktoria was walking
around in Brooklyn

like nothing had ever happened.

She used a couple
of different profiles

and a couple of different names.
Rachel was one of them.

Anna was one of them.

Sometimes she'd go
by Viktoria as well.

She was hitting a certain
demographic of men

who spoke Russian and who would
feel comfortable dating

somebody like or going out
on a date

with somebody like Viktoria.

It's real easy.
When guys are on those apps,

they pretty much wear
their wallet on the outside,

and you can tell who's got money
or at least pretending to.

So I think Viktoria saw people
like Ruben as an easy mark

to knock him out, make it look
like he drank too much,

and then he wakes up
with no wallet and no watch.

♪♪

The Queens case that I have
with Olga is the same

perpetrator as the Brooklyn
case with Ruben.

When I'm talking to Olga,
we keep kind of circling

back to this cheesecake.

So finally I said, "All right,
you ate cheesecake, right?"

She says, "Yes."
I said, "Well, there's gotta be

garbage somewhere."

And at the top
of the wastepaper basket is

this plastic clamshell container

with what appears to be
the remnants of like a pastry.

This was the first piece
of physical evidence

that I have right now.

And I said, I was like,
"Oh, OK, I actually have

something because now I know,
OK, she did eat cheesecake."

Whether it was poison or not,
I don't know,

but she did eat cheesecake.

I called evidence collection.

I asked them, "Would you guys
mind coming down to pick up,

recover, photograph
a cheesecake container?"

After the laughing on the other
end of the phone stopped,

they processed this cheesecake
container as if it was

the knife used
in a horrific murder.

The NYPD lab tests
for New York State

controlled substances
and DEA scheduled narcotics.

The lab comes back and says
there's nothing yet,

but the medical examiner's
office was able to determine

a DNA profile.

However, nothing in CoDIS,
which is the DNA database,

was a match.

♪♪

[Olga] After I got back
from the hospital,

I saw Viktoria's text message,
and I didn't answer.

She called me through WhatsApp,

and she,
"Hi, Olga, how are you?

I hear you were in the hospital,
um, what happened?"

And I told her,
"You know what happened,

"you exac -- you know exactly
what happened,

you poisoned me
and you took my stuff."

Viktoria is not calling Olga
to see how she is.

She was calling
to see if she was dead.

[Kevin]
At this point, nobody knows
where Viktoria Nasyrova is.

Olga said that if she's not
in Russia already,

she's on a plane to Russia now.

Now I'm chasing a ghost,
and this isn't

gonna go anywhere.

Had one goal, and it was
to locate Viktoria Nasyrova.

And I would have had nothing
if it wasn't

for her Facebook account.

Viktoria was in Brooklyn
in the area of Sheepshead Bay,

and then I started noticing
that she really liked

wearing mirrored sunglasses.

All right, so this is
how I spent a lot of time,

staring into the sunglasses
of Viktoria.

This is from her Facebook,
and I was, you know,

sitting there, and I,
of course, I looked right away,

could see where the navigation
screen is on the car,

and just above it is
that unique-shaped analog clock.

That was basically where
I knew that this was

a unique enough vehicle.

I wasn't looking
for a Toyota Camry

or anything like that.

Where do you find a lot
of different types of cars

but in a parking lot,
especially a big one,

you know, with thousands
of cars?

So one day before work,
I got there early,

and I began walking up and down
the parked cars

like a crazy person.
I'm surprised

nobody called the cops on me.

I started looking at every
dashboard and realizing,

"I think I'm on to something
here," because that dashboard

I haven't seen anything
even close to it

in every car I've looked at,
and I've been checking

Hyundais and Kias
and Chevys and BMWs and Audis

and you name it.

I said, "I'm gonna do
one more row and then

this is getting stupid
and I'm freezing."

So I did one more row,
and I came upon a Chrysler 300,

and I kind of took a breath
and looked at the dashboard,

and I was like, "Thank God,
I don't have to walk

around these parking
lots anymore."

It was a perfect match.

I kind of high-fived myself,
got on the train,

came to my office, and I went
to work on figuring out

how many Chrysler 300S
there were in Brooklyn.

♪♪

[Herman]
I had a bunch of surveillance
teams swing by Sheepshead Bay

and look around and try to find
as many Chrysler 300S.

They drove up and down
the streets of Sheepshead Bay,

and I would get a text
every once in a while,

"Hey, H,"
that's what they call me.

"H, got lucky, there's
three Chrysler 300S,

and here's pictures of them."

And then I'd review that,
and then I would say,

"Holy moly, this is not
gonna go well," 'cause there's

a lot of Chrysler 300S
that my people are finding.

Something about this one
white one, just everything,

I couldn't rule it out,

so the surveillance team sat
on it for a while.

Surveillance is very boring.

Everybody thinks of it
as glamorous.

You're sitting waiting for
someone to walk out of a door,

and sometimes the door
never opens.

I only have good
surveillance people.

They sat there
for a little while,

and lo and behold,
they had a driver.

And then I said, "OK,
well, so this is pretty --

an active vehicle
that's parked here."

And we were able to watch
the driver go back

into a certain building.

So now I had a shot,
but no Viktoria.

We got lucky and focused
on this one.

It was just one of those
hunches that happened,

and eventually we saw Viktoria
walking out to her car.

This is 2330 Voorhees Avenue.

This was the haystack
I was looking for,

and inside of it was the needle.

♪♪

[Beth]
A private investigator cannot
make an arrest, right?

But he's out there
with his team

looking for Viktoria,
which is incredible.

Viktoria has eluded

international
authorities, right?

She's wanted.

She could be armed,
and she's definitely dangerous.

If she gets any inkling
that she is being surveilled,

she's being watched,
she is gonna do

what she does best,
and that is disappear.

My job was to ensure
that the person that we had

under surveillance was,
in fact, Viktoria Nasyrova.

And part of that was confirming
a couple of different ways.

Her clothing that I could
cross reference

in the Facebook photos
and in surveillance.

And then further than that,
Viktoria gave me a little

present that really
confirmed the location.

She took a selfie,
and in the reflection

of her Ray-Ban
mirrored sunglasses...

Hello.

The mirrored sunglasses
reflected what she was

looking out onto.

And what she was looking out
onto was basically

this little cutout
of her building.

And it gave me a lot
of confidence when I was able

to match up these manhole covers
and that utility pole

with the brick.

That pretty much solidified
100% that that was her.

It was really one of those,
you know, "Aha" moments

that you look for
as a detective.

[tense music playing]

[Herman]
I tried contacting Interpol
at the time.

I tried contacting Department
of Homeland Security,

who was on this case.

Nobody was jumping
on this thing the way

I kind of presumed they would,

except for my old friends
at the NYPD,

some detectives that worked
in the warrant squad.

I let them know that this woman
was wanted for what she was

wanted for and what I was
looking for her for,

homicide in Russia,
but can't go making arrests

for homicides in Russia.

I did come to find out
that she had a warrant

for a shoplifting charge,
and they were very happy

to help me.

Only one problem, it was
St. Patrick's Day,

which is a very bad day
to call in a favor

from any cops that you know.

I got very frustrated very fast
because Viktoria had slipped

the noose so many times.

Anybody that can get out
of Russia, be wanted

for a homicide, end up in,
of all places, New York

in a Russian neighborhood

and survive like she was
surviving, I didn't even know

how she wasn't looking
over her shoulder

every single day of the week.

If I did all of this work
and she had a fight

with her boyfriend and moved
out, stuff like that happens

in real life, you know?
It's not like the movies.

Things get messed up.

[Kevin]
I'm in discussions constantly

with district attorney's office.

The ADA reaches out
to a friend of hers

who was in a federal lab,

who advises that we can do
a more broad test

as far as what is the actual
chemical composition

of the cheesecake that evidence
collection recovered.

Less than a week later,
I get a lab report

stating that the cheesecake
contained phenazepam

and that the pills that were
located at the scene

were also phenazepam.

[Beth]
The United States does not
routinely test for phenazepam.

It's not part of a regular
toxicology screen.

It is not a drug that can be
lawfully obtained

in the United States.

It was developed in the 1970s
in the former Soviet Union.

And if not administered
properly, it can be fatal.

Phenazepam, when a person's
core body temperature

goes above a certain temp,
it's death.

It's fatal.

Viktoria Nasyrova intentionally
turned the heat up

all the way and didn't want
someone to turn it off.

So at this point,
we're not looking

at a grand
larceny investigation.

We're looking now at an
attempted murder investigation.

This was a premeditated crime,
and Viktoria wanted Olga dead.

[soft string music playing]

[Herman] On March 20th, 2017,
the NYPD's warrant squad

showed up to arrest
Viktoria Nasyrova.

She was pretty cocky,
you know, for somebody that was

going to jail.

I think she thought she was
getting picked up

for the shoplifting charge
that she had out there.

The next time I saw her in real
life was in a courtroom,

and that day
she definitely knew

what -- what had happened.

Do you remember when she
came to the salon

with selling the bags and stuff?

-Crazy, fake bags.
-Yep.

She was so weird and I never
even wanna talk to her.

I remember the time I never
wanna talk to her.

I was always like kind
of acting.

I don't even know her.

She was a little bit
weird always.

[Dino]
You do it the old-school way.
You call out the orders

and when you're ready,
you say, "Next."

[man] Exactly.

[Dino]
My father had old-school style
luncheonette coffee shop.

It was a commercial building,
office building.

And he had the luncheonette
on the ground floor.

So everybody who worked
in the building,

instead of ordering or whatever,
would just come downstairs

and he served everything off
the hot plate, off the grill.

He'd have a setup just
like this, a line coming down,

you know, make the plate
for lunch,

send it down to the end
of the line.

And sometimes that would be me
right at the end

with the Snapples and the Cokes
and the coffee

and the little Greek cup,
the famous Greek cup, you know,

taking care of business.

My name is Dino Litourgis
and I was the prosecutor

on the case of the people
of the state of New York

versus Viktoria Nasyrova.

I'm the son of Greek immigrants
who came to New York

in the late 1960s.

Viktoria Nasyrova has all
of the great attributes

of a con artist.

She is attractive,
she's charming,

but she's also extremely clever,
extremely cunning,

and very premeditated.

But at the same time,
Viktoria's fatal flaw has been,

and always will be,
the classic

smart person's mistake.

She thinks that she's
the smartest person

in the room at all times.

If she hadn't been so full
of herself and taking selfies

and posting them
and things like that,

she probably would have gotten
away with this.

This was a crime that was
motivated by a desire

to obtain a new identity.

Her long-term future would be
dependent on whether she could

shed the identity
of Viktoria Nasyrova

and take on another identity.

Olga Tsvyk,
to her great misfortune,

was the perfect mark
for Viktoria Nasyrova.

She was a look-alike.

She was a Russian speaker
with a Russian-sounding name,

and perhaps most importantly,
she was an open,

good-hearted, trusting person,

which is exactly what Nasyrova
was looking for.

She was the perfect victim
for her.

[Kevin]
They recover her property.

In the duffel bag is Olga's

passport that's
been whitewashed.

The typed-in information
that the government puts

on the passport is taken away,
but nothing else is,

so that you can put
your own information on it.

That's the first thing
you're gonna do

if you're gonna assume
somebody's identity.

[Dino]
Viktoria Nasyrova received
21 years in state prison

for the attempted killing
of Olga Tsvyk.

So she'll serve
another 15 years or so.

And then my hope
and my expectation is

that the Russian authorities
work with U.S. law enforcement

to extradite her back to Russia
and she faces justice

in that system.

[Olga]
The judge tell her that,

"You're going to be
just a number."

So there is
no Viktoria anymore.

Viktoria is a clever person.

She's eluded the authorities
until now.

So we don't know
how many more victims

are out there.

Are there other people
out there Viktoria poisoned?

Who died?
And a cause of death was

not determined, so it was
classified as natural?

[Herman]
There's so many questions
about this.

We'll never know if somebody
else was poisoned by Viktoria

and died in a hospital and was
never checked for the drug

that she commonly used.

She doesn't have a degree
in pharmacology.

She doesn't know what she's
doing as far as using the drug

that she used.

She's probably not taking weight
and metabolism and age

and health into consideration.

She's just haphazardly
poisoning people.

And I think that's what feeds
this, you know,

this interest from people who
are sitting there saying,

"How did this happen?"

Unfortunately for Viktoria's
boyfriend, they had no idea

who he was dealing with.

He had a dog that was
very special to him

and Viktoria was jealous of
the dog on the dog's birthday

and according to neighbors,
poisoned the dog

and the dog died.
And when I hear

something like that,
I mean, if you're gonna

put a cherry on the top
of any case,

kill a dog on its birthday,
and you got me.

[Kevin] When people ask me,
"What was your craziest case?"

Not your most horrific,
Not your most gruesome,
they say,

"What was your craziest case?"
It's my go-to.

I'd like to say
that she's not dangerous

behind bars still,

but lock your doors,
watch your kids,

and don't have any
baked goods around her.

I'm planning to get a boat,

something like that.

I forgot about her.
I was living my life.

I tried to recuperate
from everything

and try not to fall in
for the same trick again.

[chuckles]
I don't recall.

[Olga] I still trust people
'cause I don't want to change

my personality because of her.
I wanna be myself.

I live my best life,
so I don't think about her.

[Beth] I wrote her a letter
in the prison.

Somehow she was able
to email me

from some weird email address.

I don't know how she did that,
'cause you can't write

an email like that from prison.
You can't.

She would not talk
without a deal of some sort.

Even from prison she's scamming.

Phenazepam is just not found
in the United States.

Where did Viktoria get this?

Did she bring it to
the United States from Russia?

Or does she have some
Russian contact

she bought phenazepam from?

How many more people has
she fed phenazepam to?

We'll never know unless
she decides to talk.

♪♪

My face had been
Photoshopped on a woman

with her legs spread wide open.

[man] And there were people
banging on her door

"I'm here to rape you."

Hollywood facialist
accused of hiring a hit man

to murder her
business competitor.

[weeping]
It just kept getting worse.

And they released that mug shot

which was a very rough mug shot
for a beauty guru.

[laughter]