An Illegal Gambling Ring in Trump Tower: the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization
This article describes an Eurasian organized crime-linked illegal gambling ring that operated out of Trump Tower. It is the eighth entry in the series entry in the series “Donald Trump, Corruption, and the Insidious Influence of Organized Crime.” While it is not necessary to read the earlier entries, it is recommended.
The first article examined Donald Trump’s early real estate career in Manhattan and his involvement in civic corruption and with organized crime.
The second article covered Trump’s connections to organized crime and civic corruption as a casino magnate in Atlantic City.
The third article dealt with the death of Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn, Trump’s purchase of Resorts International, and his financial downfall.
The fourth article covered Trump’s early links with Eurasian Organized Crime in New York and Atlantic City.
The fifth article examined Donald Trump’s second visit to Moscow in 1996 and Russian investments in Trump Organization real estate developments.
The sixth article covers Donald Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater and the Trump Organization’s corrupt Soho and Toronto developments.
The seventh article explores the corruption and links to organized crime in Trump’s overseas developments in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.
This article is an excerpt from my book, While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy, available here.
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Between 2011 and 2013, the FBI executed a court ordered warrant to surveil unit 63A at Trump Tower in New York.
One of the premier units in the building, Trump himself had owned it following the completion of the building in 1983. Eleven years later, Trump personally sold the unit to Oleg Boyko (AKA Oleg Boiko), a Russian oligarch and banker close to Boris Yeltsin.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Boyko has ties to the Russian government, intelligence services and organized crime and at one point employed David Geovanis.
As covered in a previous article, Geovanis may have possessed compromising information related to Donald Trump’s 1996 trip to Moscow.
At the time, Boyko owned the National Reserve Bank with Alexander Lebedev, a ten year veteran of the KGB.
In 2009, Boyko sold the unit to a US-Israeli dual-citizen named Vadim Trincher for $5 million, which moved through a series of shell companies Trincher had established in Cyprus. The unit was located just a few floors below Trump’s penthouse.
Born in Ukraine, Trincher was a childhood math prodigy and professional gambler. He used the money he had won from the world premier Foxwoods Poker Classic to purchase the Trump Tower unit.
Instead of continuing his career in professional poker, Trincher went into business with the notorious vor Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, known by the nickname Taiwanchik, or “Little Taiwanese,” due to his Asiatic features.
The Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization, as the Department of Justice described it in an 84-page indictment, operated an illegal sports gambling and money laundering racket out of Trump Tower.
Tokhtakhounov is an Uzbek vory v zakone closely connected to Sergei Mikhailov and the late Anton Malevsky, the respective leaders of the Solntsevskaya and Izmailovskaya, as well as with Semyon Mogilevich and the late Vyacheslav Ivankov, who was assassinated in 2009.
He was a childhood friend of Mikhail Chernoy, who he grew up with in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital where he also allegedly associated with Bayrock owner Tevfik Arif.
In his most famous caper, Tokhtakhounov fixed the figure skating event at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City by paying a bribe to ensure that the Russians duo Elna Berzhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze won gold.
A federal jury voted to indict Tokhtakhounov on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, sports bribery, and a violation of the Travel Act. The case was brought by then-US attorney in Manhattan James Comey.
The Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization operated high stakes online and telephonic sports betting out of Trincher’s Trump Tower home. Tokhtakhounov used his status as a vor to attract gamblers and adjudicate disputes, occasionally resorting to the threat of violence.
Its patrons included powerful Russian and Ukrainian who would bet up to $2 million on a soccer match.
Others included an Uzbek mafia boss named Salim Abduvaliyev and an Azerbaijani named Gennady “Roman” Manashirov who was charged with bribing officials at the Russian Interior Ministry.
Trincher’s son Ilya partnered with Hillel “Helly” Nahmad, the wealthy heir to a Monaco-based, Lebanese-Jewish banking and art collecting dynasty. Nahmad owned the entire 51st floor of Trump Tower, which he and Ilya Trincher used to host an illegal, high stakes poker ring. Their patrons included Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Alex Rodriguez.
According to the indictment, the Trump Tower-based gambling operations were also used to launder over $100 million dollars.
One of the principal leaders of the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization was Anatoly Golubchik, who also owned a condo at the Trump International Beach Resort located in “Little Russia,” Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.
Golubchik was also the owner of Lytton Ventures, a shell company whose director was listed as Galina Telesh, the ex-wife of Semyon Mogilevich.
Golubchik, who has been described as an “enforcer” for Tokhtakhounov, was also a business partner of Trincher’s in several other venture, including a private airline. According to court documents, these companies were used to launder over $100 million for “high-level” criminals.
Vadim Trincher and his wife used the proceeds of his crimes to donate thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican, George W. Bush, John McCaine and Lindsey Graham.
A fundraiser the couple had planned to host for Newt Gingrich was only called off after a leak had sprung from the roof of their Trump Tower apartment.
Trincher had also attended a celebrity poker tournament alongside Bill Clinton and in 2012 donated between $5,000–10,0000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Ilya Trincher knew Marc Lasry, a billionaire poker enthusiast who had employed Chelsea Clinton at his investment fund.
In April 2013 the FBI executed a predawn morning raid on Trincher’s Trump Tower Apartment, the culmination of over two years of surveillance.
The agent who led the investigation into Tokhtakhounov and the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization was Mike Gaeta, head of the FBI’s Eurasian organized crime unit in New York.
During the 2016 election, Gaeta served as the FBI’s liaison with Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 Officer who authored controversial raw intelligence reports about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia that came to be known as the “Trump/Russia Dossier.”
Inside the apartment they found a trove and jewelery and gold worth millions of dollars and over $2 million in casino chips.
While Vadim and Ilya Trincher and Helly Nahmad received prison sentences, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov remained at large in Russia where he moved around freely.
Seven months after the FBI raid on Trump Tower, Tokhtakhounov was spotted standing near Donald Trump in the VIP section of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in November of 2013.
The next, and final, installment in this series will cover Donald Trump’s relationship with the organized crime-linked Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov, his involvement in the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, and his quest to meet Vladimir Putin.