U.S. Gang Caught Red-Handed With Illegal Ukrainian Immigrants, Girls Prostituted

An ethnic Ukrainian gang was caught red-handed in smoothly arranged immigrant traffic from Ukraine. No less than two thousand had illegally entered the USA over several years, each paying an average $7,000, say police reports. The ringleaders--Sergei Mezheritsky, 35, and Tatyana Komisaruk, 49, both of Los Angeles--and their nine accomplices are under arrest. Another eight are wanted and presumed to have taken refuge in their ancestral country. Ukraine is in a bad economic crisis, so the gang did not lack in clients. They bought tourist vouchers in a Kiev-based travel agency to go to Mexico and be led across the frontier to the United States. The American Dream came true only for a lucky few. The rest had to pay several thousand dollars each above established fees as gangsters alleged that frontier-crossing charges had grown while they were on the way. Girls' plight was even worse--they were forced into prostitution, says Dan Saunders, assistant district attorney. As follows from the Mezheritsky file, the man was plotting to set up a secret brothel network, and looked forward to daily $10,000 profits. He intended to plant video cameras in the rooms and blackmail his slaves' clients.