Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were Los Angeles men from the former Soviet Union, connected through a business called Designed Water World. Between October 2001 and January 2002, federal prosecutors proved, the two men and a handful of accomplices abducted five people, held them for ransom, and killed all five whether or not the money came. Ransom totaling more than $1 million was paid. The first body was recovered in October 2001 and the other four in March 2002, in Tuolumne County, near Yosemite National Park.
A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted both men in January 2007 of conspiracy to take hostages resulting in death, three counts of hostage taking resulting in death, conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to escape from jail. The jury recommended death, and Judge Dickran Tevrizian imposed it in March 2007. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in May 2018, describing the evidence of guilt as "detailed, comprehensive, and in a word, overwhelming." The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October 2019. On December 23, 2024, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 federal prisoners, Mikhel and Kadamovas among them, to life without parole.
The Ninth Circuit found that Mikhel himself killed Nick Kharabadze, the last of the five. In October 2026 the Federal Bureau of Prisons listed him at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, with a release date of "LIFE."
The Bureau of Prisons records his full name as Iouri Gherman Mikhel. He was born in Leningrad, in the Soviet Union, according to the Russian news site Lenta.ru and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta; his exact date of birth was not given in those reports. Novaya Gazeta gave his age as 41 when he was sentenced in 2007, and a federal complaint filed in April 2025 gave it as 59.
Lenta.ru, summing up the case in February 2008, reported that in the early 1990s Mikhel was wanted in Russia on suspicion of extortion, that he left for the United States, and that he obtained American citizenship. Lenta.ru did not say where it had that information, and no charge from that period is known to have been tried. Little else about his early life, his education or his family was reported. The jury that decided his sentence in 2007 heard evidence about his upbringing, his mental health and his life in Russia, including videotaped interviews, but the appeals court did not describe that evidence in detail.
By 2001 he was living in Los Angeles. Kadamovas, a Lithuanian, lived there too, and the two men were connected through a business called Designed Water World, which had an office with a bar and a pool table. In his own testimony at trial, Mikhel described a long earlier career as a smuggler and money launderer, with a yacht he valued at $17 million, business in the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, and a vineyard outside Modesto that he called a "safe house" for papers and money. The court struck that testimony, and none of it was tested by cross-examination.
The Ninth Circuit named the men and women who worked with Mikhel and Kadamovas. Ainar Altmanis, Aleksejus Markovskis and Natalya Solovyeva pleaded guilty and testified for the government. Petro Krylov was tried separately and convicted. Lenta.ru described Solovyeva as Kadamovas's companion; at her sentencing her lawyers said he controlled her, while prosecutors said she had manipulated him.
The group, according to Lenta.ru, took shape in October 2001. Prosecutors said its targets were wealthy Russian immigrants in Los Angeles, the Jerusalem Post reported. Novaya Gazeta reported that the cooperating witnesses described much larger ambitions: they testified that Kadamovas spoke of collecting $50 million, even if it meant leaving a trail of bodies, and that the planned targets included wealthy Russians in New York, in Florida and at Colorado ski resorts.
Meyer Muscatel was 58, a real-estate developer and homebuilder in the San Fernando Valley, according to Associated Press reports in March 2002. He disappeared on October 11, 2001, after telling his family he was going to a business meeting. His daughter told the AP that he was meeting people who said they wanted to build 20 homes in Malibu, and that he had called his bank four times saying he needed money released. His family offered a reward of $54,000.
The meeting was a trap that Mikhel, Kadamovas and Altmanis had rehearsed. Mikhel posed as a buyer and asked Muscatel to look at a house; it was Mikhel's own. Kadamovas and Altmanis were waiting inside and seized him. The men took his wallet and cards and tried to get at his bank account, but the bank froze it. They then killed him, the Ninth Circuit wrote.
His body was recovered on October 18, 2001, a week after he vanished. For months it was the only body found. The AP reported that it was formally identified as Muscatel's in March 2002, after the other four had been recovered. Testimony about an antisemitic remark Kadamovas later made to a friend about Muscatel was raised on appeal.
The group's real target was George Safiev, a wealthy businessman from Russia, and the way to him ran through his financial adviser, Rita Pekler, who was 39. In December 2001 Kadamovas contacted her, posing as a client who wanted advice on a property deal, and had her drive him to his home. Mikhel and Altmanis were waiting there, armed.
Pekler told her captors she was pregnant. The men tried for days to use her to lure Safiev into a meeting. He told her he was too busy, and soon afterward he left Los Angeles for Russia. With their plan stalled, the men killed her, the court found. Lenta.ru described her as Safiev's accountant; Novaya Gazeta called her his bookkeeper.
Later in December 2001 Krylov suggested a new target: his former employer, Alexander Umansky, 35, who owned an automobile shop. Mikhel called him posing as a customer who needed audio systems installed in two cars and asked to be picked up. Umansky drove him to Kadamovas's house, where he was held for three days.
He was forced to telephone his brother and beg for money. His debit card was used at an ATM whose camera recorded the withdrawals. His family received a ransom note demanding nearly $235,000 and went to the FBI, which advised them to pay only part of it so that the kidnappers would have a reason to keep him alive. After a call threatening other relatives, the family paid the rest. The AP reported in March 2002 that the family said it had paid a large ransom.
By then the men had decided to kill him. Umansky was killed by suffocation and strangulation. An IRS investigator later testified about how the ransom was moved through accounts abroad.
Safiev came back to Los Angeles in January 2002. Lenta.ru described him as a former chairman of the board of the Russian Capital bank who later ran a company called Matador Communications in the United States. He was 37. His friend and business partner, Nick Kharabadze, was 29; the AP described him as a sound editor who co-owned a film production company, and said his mother was a well-known Russian actress.
Solovyeva telephoned Kharabadze, said a friend had given her his number, and invited him to meet her at what she called a private club. It was the Designed Water World office. Altmanis and Markovskis were playing pool there, and Kadamovas stood behind the bar with a revolver hidden underneath it. Mikhel handcuffed Kharabadze, and Kharabadze was then used to bring Safiev to the same place, where he too was seized.
The two men were held at Kadamovas's house for four days. Safiev was forced to have his business partner abroad transfer $940,000. Once Mikhel had confirmed that the money had arrived, the hostages were given vodka and driven north in two cars. On the way a police officer stopped the cars for driving too close together. Mikhel spoke briefly with him and was allowed to drive on. Solovyeva later testified that Kadamovas said he would have killed the officer if he had seen the hostages.
The Union Democrat, the newspaper in Sonora, reported in 2024 that Safiev and Kharabadze were driven to Tuolumne County and killed there. The Ninth Circuit found that Mikhel killed Kharabadze by suffocation and strangulation, and that Safiev had already been killed the same way.
The killings did not end the demands. Mikhel used the victims' ATM cards and was recorded by surveillance cameras. Kadamovas gave the cards to an associate who traveled to Germany to withdraw more money. Mikhel used one of Safiev's credit cards to order about $9,000 in electronic equipment.
He also called Safiev's partner in London and faxed him a ransom note that Safiev had signed, demanding another $4 million. The partner tape-recorded the calls. According to the Ninth Circuit, Mikhel and Kadamovas received more than $1 million in all and spent it on cars, home renovations, gifts for their girlfriends and vacations. Lenta.ru and the Jerusalem Post put the total collected at about $1.2 million, and an Associated Press report in March 2002 quoted a spokesman for the U.S. attorney as saying more than $5.5 million had been demanded of the victims' relatives and associates.
For months after Muscatel was found, his death was an isolated case. Then Altmanis learned that he was under investigation. He confessed and helped the FBI find the other four victims, who were recovered over several days in March 2002, according to AP reports at the time. The Union Democrat later reported that Tuolumne County's sheriff's office did the recovery work. Jim Mele, then a sheriff's patrol sergeant and later the county's sheriff, told the paper in 2024 that the killers seemed to have chosen the area because they thought it was remote and lacked the resources to find the bodies. "Tuolumne County, we really were integral in the recovery of these bodies," he said.
The FBI wiretapped the defendants' telephones and recorded them discussing ransom money. Cellphone records placed their phones driving north on the days the victims died.
A search of Mikhel's house produced the original $4 million ransom note, records of the victims' personal and financial details, four pairs of handcuffs, plastic ties, fourteen handguns, a silencer, stun devices and fraudulent passports. Fingerprints and DNA tied the defendants to these items; Safiev's and Kharabadze's DNA was on the handcuffs. Searches of Kadamovas's two homes, in Sherman Oaks and Encino, produced weight plates, an envelope bearing the phone number used for the ransom calls, a dagger connected to the money laundering, a handgun, shoes with prints matching marks at the scene where Muscatel's body had been taken, and carpet fibers matching fibers on Kharabadze's clothing.
On March 22, 2002, the AP reported that six men of Russian descent were in federal custody, held without bond and charged with hostage taking or receiving ransom money. The U.S. attorney's office said the five victims had been abducted, blackmailed and killed over six months. At a news conference, Kharabadze's mother asked, in Russian: "Do these murderers have mothers?" Lenta.ru reported that Mikhel was arrested in March 2002 together with Kadamovas, Krylov and Altmanis. The federal case was numbered 2:02-cr-00220 in the Central District of California.
Jail did not settle Mikhel. Held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, he planned an escape for himself, Kadamovas and Krylov. The idea was to bore through the cell walls into an adjoining stairwell, force the window bars open with a hydraulic pump, and climb down the outside of the building, where a motorcycle gang would be waiting; the escapees would scatter and regroup at a safe house. Kadamovas moved to a cell next to the stairwell.
Mikhel built up what the Ninth Circuit called "a veritable hardware store" in his cell: hacksaw blades, wrenches, screwdrivers, fishing line, paint, work gloves, bolt cutters and a camcorder. Novaya Gazeta reported that he had paid off another inmate to help him get tools, marijuana and a video camera to film the escape. He offered tools to another inmate for a price and warned that they would "have to kill any guards" they met on the way out. That inmate told officials, who found a large hole and tools in Mikhel's cell and a smaller hole in Krylov's. No tunneling was found in Kadamovas's cell, though other evidence tied him to the plot.
Moved to the Central Detention Center in San Bernardino County and held under special administrative measures, which sharply limit a prisoner's contacts, Mikhel tried again. He wrote a letter promising $1 million to a man he believed belonged to the Mexican Mafia in exchange for help escaping. Officials intercepted it, and a deputy testified that the plan was "very feasible." At the West Valley Detention Center, officers moved him through the building blindfolded and in a wheelchair so that he could not count his steps.
The escape plot became a count of its own. Both men were convicted of conspiracy to escape, and on appeal the Ninth Circuit rejected their challenges to the evidence on that count, finding that the one letter wrongly admitted had done no harm to the outcome.
The years before trial also wore on him in other ways. In January 2004 he cut an artery in his ankle. In April 2005 he saved up his medications and took them together. On the eve of opening statements in 2006 he tried to hang himself with a sheet. Each time, the Ninth Circuit noted, he said he felt hopeless about his case, and every doctor who examined him afterward reported the same reason.
A jail psychiatrist, Dr. Inderpal Dhillon, first diagnosed major depression and later bipolar disorder. In early 2004 she recorded auditory hallucinations, which she attributed to a medication, and she later saw signs of hypomania. In a letter dated September 5, 2006, a defense psychiatrist, Dr. William Vicary, wrote that Mikhel's behavior was "largely due to his untreated Bipolar Disorder," without giving an opinion on whether he was fit to stand trial.
The day after the hanging attempt, Mikhel came to court in jail clothes. He later said that dressing up for the few hours a day he spent in court would have been superficial. One of his lawyers told the judge: "with [Mikhel's] suicidal frame of mind, I don't know that he's competent," but the defense never asked for a competency hearing. The court ordered a forensic evaluation. Dr. Ralph Ihle, the chief forensic psychologist at the detention center, reported on September 14, 2006, that Mikhel's intellect was in the "high or above average range," that he had no significant cognitive impairment, and that he had a major depressive disorder. Ihle had discussed existential philosophy with him, including Nietzsche, Viktor Frankl and nihilism. "[A]ny difficulties he exhibits with respect to legal counsel are volitional," Ihle wrote. The court found Mikhel competent to stand trial the same day.
The trial before Judge Tevrizian in the federal court in Los Angeles began in July 2006. The jury was anonymous: it was drawn from a pool of 270, each side had 28 peremptory challenges, and the judge found that disclosing jurors' identities could put their lives or safety at risk. The government presented scores of witnesses over more than thirty trial days, among them Altmanis, Markovskis and Solovyeva. Novaya Gazeta reported that the whole trial lasted seven months and a day.
Twice during the guilt phase Mikhel asked in writing for new lawyers, complaining that they would not follow his suggestions on strategy and later that they disagreed about whether he should testify. The judge refused both requests. On January 5, 2007, a man who had been released from federal prison that day attended court and told staff he was a "friend" or "fan" of Mikhel; court staff found his behavior intimidating, and the judge barred him from returning.
On December 28, 2006, Judge Tevrizian told the parties that a screening committee had asked him to put his name forward for United States Attorney for the Central District of California, the office prosecuting the case, and that he had done so. No one objected at the time. After the guilty verdicts the defense moved to have him step aside. He withdrew his application and denied the motion.
At the close of the guilt phase Mikhel took the stand. He testified on direct examination for three days. The first two covered his life before the crimes as a smuggler and money launderer; his lawyer said the aim was to lay "a foundation for what he did later" by admitting misconduct that involved neither kidnapping nor murder. His theme, as the appeals court summed it up, was that he was a wealthy white-collar criminal with no reason to commit violent hostage takings. Then he refused to be cross-examined. On Kadamovas's motion, the judge struck the testimony and told the jury to disregard it. The Ninth Circuit later called the testimony a "Hail Mary" attempt to clear himself and Kadamovas, ill-advised but not irrational given how strong the evidence was. After that Mikhel refused to come to court, except to hear the verdict.
The jury began deliberating on January 16, 2007, and found both men guilty on every count the next day.
The penalty phase began on January 24, 2007. Mikhel refused to attend any of it. His lawyers went ahead with a case in mitigation that included testimony from Dr. Vicary and Dr. Dhillon. Vicary testified that Mikhel had paranoid delusions and believed his lawyers, the judge and the government were "all working against him," which he partly blamed on the long period under special administrative measures; he also said Mikhel was "faking health." On cross-examination Vicary called him a "pathological liar." Mikhel complained that his lawyers had not answered that remark on redirect. He told the court he had planned to testify for two weeks and that he had refused cross-examination and stayed away because his lawyers had abandoned that plan. His lawyers then sought an evaluation so that he could "show that he has no mental problems," and one told the judge, "I have a question as to Mr. Mikhel's competency." The judge, who held two hearings with Mikhel in the lockup, again found him competent and refused his request for new counsel.
On February 13, 2007, the jury unanimously recommended death for both men. It found every aggravating factor the government had alleged; no juror found any mitigating factor. The Jerusalem Post reported that the jury deliberated less than a day. On March 12, 2007, Judge Tevrizian sentenced Mikhel and Kadamovas to death on each of the four capital counts, with 20 years on the remaining counts and more than $1 million in forfeiture. Novaya Gazeta noted that under federal law the judge was bound to follow the jury's recommendation.
Lenta.ru reported the sentences of the others in 2008. Krylov, then 35, received life without parole in January 2008. Markovskis, 34, received 15 years the same month for two kidnappings and extortion. Solovyeva, 32, was sentenced on February 20, 2008, to 15 years. Altmanis, 48, received 23 years and four months the same day; he asked the court to forgive him.
The appeal took more than a decade. A Ninth Circuit panel of Judges Jay S. Bybee, Milan D. Smith Jr. and Michelle T. Friedland heard argument in Pasadena on January 10, 2018. Michael Tanaka argued for Mikhel and Michael A. Brown for the government. The Russian Federation filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the defendants. The panel's opinion, by Judge Bybee, was filed on May 9, 2018, and affirmed the convictions and death sentences of both men.
The court rejected the argument that the Hostage Taking Act, which carries out a 1979 international convention against hostage taking, could be used only in cases linked to international terrorism, and it held that Congress had the power to pass the law and to attach the death penalty to it. It held that the recusal motion came too late and that, in any event, the judge's impartiality could not reasonably be questioned. It rejected a claim that a juror had been struck because of race, and found no plain error in the anonymous jury or in excluding the spectator. The three-day absence of one of Mikhel's two lawyers during trial, it said, was harmless.
On competency, the panel agreed that the suicide attempts were concerning and that a hearing "might have been prudent," but held that the judge had not plainly erred by failing to order one on his own. The doctors had found Mikhel competent, his own lawyers never asked for a hearing, and his conduct showed that he understood what was at stake. The court quoted earlier case law to say that a defendant who refuses to cooperate with his lawyers out of spite is not for that reason incompetent.
In the penalty phase, the court found that a prosecutor's comparison of prison life with the victims' deaths had been improper but did not require a new sentencing hearing. It assumed without deciding that an instruction on future dangerousness was flawed and held any error harmless. It rejected challenges to the victim-impact evidence, including evidence of a victim's religion, and to the admission of a dagger bearing a swastika. On the Russian Federation's brief, which questioned the death penalty itself, the panel said that such a question was for the Supreme Court. On October 7, 2019, the Supreme Court denied Mikhel's petition for certiorari, No. 18-7835, on the same order list that denied Kadamovas's.
On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 federal prisoners to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, leaving three men on federal death row. Mikhel and Kadamovas were among the 37. Novaya Gazeta reported that Biden said he could not let a new administration resume the executions he had halted. The Union Democrat reported that death penalty opponents welcomed the commutations while some victims' families criticized them. Mele, the former sheriff, told the paper: "I just feel that it brings up the wounds to these families."
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to review where the 37 were held and to ensure conditions "consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes." On April 16, 2025, Mikhel and Kadamovas were among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit, Taylor v. Trump, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., to stop their transfer to the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colorado. The complaint described Mikhel's "long and well-documented history of serious mental illness, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder," and alleged that the Bureau of Prisons had first decided he should go to a program at the high-security penitentiary in Terre Haute and was not appropriate for the supermax.
In October 2026 the Bureau of Prisons listed Iouri Gherman Mikhel, register number 23675-112, at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, aged 61, serving a life sentence.
Lenta.ru reported in 2008 that American authorities had linked Mikhel and Kadamovas to two killings, in Turkey and in Cyprus. Neither was charged, no court has ruled on them, and the report gave no names or details. The same site reported that he had been wanted in Russia for extortion in the early 1990s; that claim has not been tested in any court.
Mikhel's own account of his past, given from the witness stand, was struck from the record because he would not answer questions about it. The yacht, the vineyard and the smuggling career he described were never tested.
Accounts differ on some details. Lenta.ru put his arrest in March 2002. The victims' occupations vary between reports: Kharabadze was a sound editor and co-owner of a film production company to the AP, a film producer to Lenta.ru and a sound engineer to Novaya Gazeta. Safiev's first name appears as George in the court record and as Georgy in the AP and Lenta.ru. The total collected is given as more than $1 million by the court and about $1.2 million in news reports.
October 2001: The group forms, according to Lenta.ru. On October 11, Meyer Muscatel disappears; his body is recovered on October 18.
December 2001: Rita Pekler is abducted and killed. Later that month Alexander Umansky is held for three days and killed after his family pays ransom.
January 2002: Nick Kharabadze and George Safiev are abducted, held for four days and killed in Tuolumne County after $940,000 is transferred. A $4 million demand follows.
March 2002: Altmanis confesses and leads investigators to the four other bodies. By March 22 six suspects are in federal custody; Lenta.ru dates Mikhel's arrest to that month.
Before trial: Escape plans in jails in Los Angeles and San Bernardino County are uncovered.
January 2004 and April 2005: Mikhel tries to take his own life; a third attempt comes on the eve of opening statements in 2006.
July 2006: Trial opens before Judge Dickran Tevrizian.
September 14, 2006: Found competent to stand trial.
January 17, 2007: Guilty on all counts.
February 13, 2007: The jury recommends death.
March 12, 2007: Sentenced to death.
January and February 2008: Krylov, Markovskis, Solovyeva and Altmanis are sentenced.
January 10, 2018: Ninth Circuit hears argument.
May 9, 2018: Ninth Circuit affirms.
October 7, 2019: Supreme Court denies certiorari.
December 23, 2024: Death sentence commuted to life without parole.
April 16, 2025: Named as a plaintiff in Taylor v. Trump.
October 2026: Held at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute.