BY JESSICA PARKS
A high-ranking member
of a southern Brooklyn-based
crime syndicate was sentenced
to 16 and a half years
behind bars on Tuesday for a
host of crimes — including his
involvement in the arson of a
three-story Sheepshead Bay
apartment building in 2016.
Sheepshead Bay mobster
Leonid “Lenny” Gershman
was sentenced on Tuesday by
United States District Judge
Brian M. Cogan to charges of
loansharking, extortion, arson,
marijuana distribution,
and conspiring to traffi ck fi rearms,
among other charges,
according to authorities.
Gershman, 36, had hosted
in an illegal poker ring that
helped fund his criminal enterprise
when he ignited
an inferno that engulfed a
Voorhies Avenue building —
3guysfrombrooklyn.com
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which housed a rival poker
game, according to prosecutors.
“Gershman is a violent
racketeer deservedly punished
today for the harm he
has infl icted through beatings,
extortions, loansharking
and, most seriously, an
arson that displaced families
from their homes and endangered
the lives of children and
New York City fi refi ghters,”
stated United States Attorney
Richard Donoghue.
Along with co-defendant
Aleksey Tsvekvov of Bergen
Beach, prosecutors claim Gershman
hired two co-conspirators
to set the rival game’s
building on fi re in the spring
of 2016 — trapping a young
boy and a teenager in the blaze
leaving them to be rescued by
fi refi ghters, according to prosecutors.
One of the two survivors
described his experience attempting
to escape from the
third fl oor with his younger
brother during the blaze while
on the witness stand last year.
The two suffered smoke inhalation
and one of the rescuing
fi refi ghters required surgery
to treat a resulting back injury,
authorities said.
The Sheepshead Bay mobster
was convicted following
a three-week trial in August
2018 for the arson and the
various other illicit crime
syndicate activities — whose
members born in the former
Soviet Union, and operated
throughout southern Brooklyn
between 2011 and May
2017, according to investigators.
Tsvekvov, Gershman’s codefendant,
is still awaiting
sentencing, prosecutors said.
Leonid Gershman (right) with co-defendant Aleksey Tsvekov, who is
awaiting sentencing. Photo courtesy of the US Attorney’s Offi ce
“Hopefully today will
mark the beginning of a sense
of closure to the families that
Gershman and his co-conspirators
affl icted for so many
years,” said Drug Enforcement
Agency Special Agentin
Charge Ray Donovan.
Un-wise guy
Sheepshead Bay mobster sentenced to
16 years for arson, racketeering
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