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Defendant In In-Law Attacks Says He Was Set Up

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 13, 2008

Updated: 11/13/2008 06:30 pm

TAMPA - Alex Shevgert says he was not involved in attacks on his in-laws, and was blackmailed by one of the attackers.

"Larik Cholak set me up!" Shevgert repeatedly insisted during testimony in Shevgert's trial on charges he orchestrated attacks on his parents-in-law because they stopped giving him money after funding a string of his failed businesses.

Shevgert said he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by attacking his in-laws, who he said had not cut him off before the attacks.

Cholak has pleaded guilty to his involvement in the attacks and testified that he served as a middleman and driver for two of the attacks against Galina and Grigori Komissarchuk near their homes in Sarasota and the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn.

Cholak said Shevgert paid him and the assailant, Edmon Vardanyan, who has also pleaded guilty. The man who served as driver in the final attack in Brooklyn, Sergey Zub, has also pleaded guilty and testified against Shevgert.

"I was dragged into this without my knowledge, my approval, my participation," Shevgert said. "I just want everyone to know the truth."

Shevgert said Cholak orchestrated the attacks because he thought that if the Komissarchuks were killed, Shevgert would inherit a fortune. Shevgert said Cholak then blackmailed him, saying if he didn't give him money, he would implicate him in the attacks.

Shevgert said what he had with the Komissarchuks was "always very good relationship through our marriage, since I married Emelia."

The Komissarchuks, who both suffered skull fractures and other serious injuries, have testified they cut Shevgert off and that he and their daughter continued to demand money. The arguments, they said, sometimes turned violent. Once, for example, they said their daughter choked her mother in an argument over money.

Emelia Shevgert denied choking her mother, and she said her parents and she had just made plans to go into business together.

She told a jury she doesn't think her husband is guilty of orchestrating attacks on her parents.

"I believe that my husband could not do such a thing," she testified.

"He had no reason to do this. He had no reason to hurt my parents like that."

Emelia Shevgert said she listened to recordings of conversations between her husband and a middleman and driver in the attacks, but she still thinks he is innocent.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Porcelli pointed out portions of the transcript of a conversation between the defendant and Larik Cholak during which Alex Shevgert appears to urge Cholak to leave the country and promises him money.

"I think you should just keep silence and hold out," Shevgert says at one point.

On another part, Shevgert seems to say he will get money when his father-in-law dies, and he will share it with Cholak:

"The old man will kick the bucket soon; he is over 70 already. And you'll see. I'll get it."

Later, he says, "They'll pressure me and pressure me and pressure me and pressure me and pressure me. … But everything is indirect. And I won't say anything. I don't know anything. But what can they do to me? In the worst possible case, they'll give me 10 to 15 years."

In another portion, it appears Cholak says they should have stopped after the first attack, and Shevgert says they should have stopped after the second.

"The first time was enough," Cholak says. "After the first time, we could've. … Everything would've been fine."

Shevgert responds, "After the second one, it would have been fine."

Emelia Shevgert said she listened to all that and still thinks her husband is innocent.

She admitted moving in to her parents' Sarasota house without their permission while they were living in New York. She said she was angry when she and her husband were losing their house and her parents' house was sitting empty, so they moved in. She told her parents, she said, when they asked her to check on the house because the utility bills increased.

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