Deceased/Not Found NY - Michael Klein, 69, Brooklyn, 23 Nov 2003 *D. Yakovlev guilty*

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/cri...n-believed-brutally-murdered-article-1.138653

Former police department mechanic Michael Klein disappeared shortly after selling his ramshackle home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for $410,000 to an associate of Dmitriy Yakovlev...

Testifying under immunity granted by the government, Hamilton said he committed tax fraud with Yakovlev in connection with the purchase of Klein's home.

Klein's sister Margaret Gold, who also tried unsuccesfully to report Michael missing, thinks he was the victim of foul play. "I don't think my brother is on the planet anymore," she said outside court.

https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-r...t-involving-three-missing-or-murdered-persons

During a three-week jury trial, the government presented testimony of nearly 40 witnesses, including five forensic experts, to establish that Yakovlev exploited the identities of Michael Klein, Viktor Alekseyev, and Irina Malezhik to commit aggravated identity theft, credit card fraud, and bank fraud shortly after each victim disappeared...

The evidence at trial also established that Yakovlev had in his possession personal identification and property of each victim including: more than $350,000 in checks made payable to Klein at the real estate closing...

Judge Glasser found that in addition to murdering Alekseyev and Malezhik, Yakovlev also was responsible for murdering Klein.

Feature article on the case by journalist Jonathan Vit, from December 2013:

https://medium.com/@Vit_Jonathan/the-devil-in-little-odessa-65fd60a46b6e#.z2sd645r6

Klein planned to move in with his girlfriend in Mastic, Long Island, and agreed to sell the house to Basalyga for $410,000, packing what he needed and telling Basalyga to throw the rest out... On November 23, 2003, Basalyga closed on the house...

Later that evening, Basalyga drove to the Manhattan Avenue home. He knocked on Klein’s door. The door was locked. When Klein didn’t answer, he went upstairs and knocked on the door of Klein’s second apartment. Again, no answer. Confused, Basalyga drove home and phoned Yakovlev. What happened to Klein, Basalyga asked his friend.

Yakovlev told Basalyga that he saw Klein get into his car, a small white Toyota, and drive away. The next morning, Basalyga drove to the house and found Yakovlev standing in Klein’s apartment, a ring of keys in his hand. A plexiglass window had been knocked out...

Klein's remains were never recovered.
 
During a three-week jury trial, the government presented testimony of nearly 40 witnesses, including five forensic experts, to establish that Yakovlev exploited the identities of Michael Klein, Viktor Alekseyev, and Irina Malezhik to commit aggravated identity theft, credit card fraud, and bank fraud shortly after each victim disappeared in November 2003, December 2005, and October 2007, respectively, and that Yakovlev murdered Alekseyev and Malezhik in connection with his theft of their identities. Yakovlev used each victim’s identity to obtain money and goods for himself.

The government’s evidence established that Yakovlev personally knew each of his victims, was the last person to see each of them alive, and thereafter possessed jewelry or other personal items belonging to each victim. For example, two days after Klein disappeared following the closing on the sale of his Brooklyn home, his car was found abandoned in New Jersey near an apartment complex where Yakovlev and his wife Julia Yakovlev previously had lived. Approximately two years later, in early January 2006, Alekseyev’s dismembered remains were found in a park approximately two miles from that apartment complex. At trial, a forensic expert testified that the manner in which Alekseyev’s body was dismembered suggested it had been done by someone with anatomical knowledge and surgical training, such as Yakovlev possessed.

The evidence at trial also established that Yakovlev had in his possession personal identification and property of each victim including: more than $350,000 in checks made payable to Klein at the real estate closing; a Patek Philippe watch, driver’s license, birth certificate, and other personal documents belonging to Alekseyev; and Malezhik’s Social Security card, cellular telephone, and underwear containing Malezhik’s DNA, which was recovered in the defendant’s basement years after Malezhik’s disappearance.
In sentencing Yakovlev today, Judge Glasser found that in addition to murdering Alekseyev and Malezhik, Yakovlev also was responsible for murdering Klein. As part of the defendant’s sentence, Judge Glasser ordered the defendant to forfeit $432,050, representing the proceeds of the fraud.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/n...t-involving-three-missing-or-murdered-persons

 
Incredible article below gives you more of an insight on all of the people especially on Michael Klein which there never really has been much information. From reading this it make me believe that Yakovlev probably killed him in his own house in the bathroom Michael was cut up like everyone else and went out with the trash is what it seems like to me. Here is a bit of the article and information about Michael and his home cats and girlfriend.. I wonder if they ever spoke to any neighbors or the girlfriend more or even went to the house to look for more clues..

Abrahams and Ruscio started their investigation the old fashioned way, on foot. The two printed out a list of every address ever associated with Yakovlev and started knocking on doors.
Most of their interviews yielded little information. One thing was clear: no one liked Yakovlev. Most described him as a mean man with an even meaner dog.
A week after Yakovlev’s arrest, Abrahams and Ruscio knocked on the door of 4120 Manhattan Avenue, a creepy house in Sea Gate that was being rented out one room at a time.

“It looks like something out of ‘The Munsters,’ ” Abrahams recalled.
A tenant suggested Abrahams speak with his landlord, a man named Alexsander Basalyga, but went by the Americanized name Alexander Hamilton.
Abrahams immediately called Basalyga, telling the man that he was investigating Yakovlev. Basalyga listened, then suggested they meet in person.
“I have a lot of information for you,” Basalyga said.

Basalyga moved from Estonia — where he worked as a computer programmer at an advertising agency — to the United States in 1998. By 2000, he ran his own business, selling women’s shoes over the Internet, and was living in an apartment in Gravesend, Brooklyn.
Yakovlev owned the apartment and the two men, who shared a common childhood in the Soviet Union, became friends. Basalyga and his wife would join Yakovlev and his wife on trips to Philadelphia. They went skiing in Pennsylvania and relaxed upstate on Lake George.
Basalyga once went with Yakovlev to New Jersey. Yakovlev briefly lived in Newark in 1998 before moving to Brooklyn. They drove to a park near Orange, New Jersey, to go rollerskating. Basalyga could see the Manhattan skyline from the park. It was immediately after September 11th and a wall facing the city was covered in scraps of paper and American flags memorializing the Twin Towers.

One day, Yakovlev handed Basalyga two checks for a $1,000 each. He told Basalyga to deposit the checks in his account and hand back the amount in cash.
Basalyga was nervous and told Yakovlev that he wanted to call his accountant first. Yakovlev told his friend to forget about it and took the checks back.
In 2003, Basalyga heard about a house for sale in Sea Gate. The house, at 4120 Manhattan Avenue, had been split into apartments. But it was a mess. The outside was littered with branches and fallen trees. The inside was even worse.
The owner, Michael Klein, was a bit of a recluse. He was also a hoarder. A retired mechanic for the New York Police Department, Klein had filled the house with so much junk — furniture, tools and stacks of paper — that there was only a path of clean floor from one door to the next.

A dozen cats — belonging to his girlfriend Janet Chase — lived in a third floor apartment. Outside, the garage was full, packed with construction materials and a motorcycle. A camper, an old Mercedes Benz and a 20-foot boat that would sink if it were actually put in the water, were parked nearby.
“The house was really a good candidate for a horror movie,” Basalyga said.

The house was so packed that Klein, who looked a bit like an unkempt Santa Claus with his bushy white beard and wild hair, had to live in two apartments. He spent his days on the first floor, in unit 132-A, but the apartment was so full that he had to sleep upstairs in apartment 132-J.
“He was a person who didn’t throw out anything,” Basalyga said. “He collected whatever he could get.”
Klein planned to move in with his girlfriend in Mastic, Long Island, and agreed to sell the house to Basalyga for $410,000, packing what he needed and telling Basalyga to throw the rest out.

Basalyga excitedly told Yakovlev he was buying the house. Yakovlev, who was flipping homes at the time, had recently sold a house and asked Basalyga if Julia’s name could be on the deed. It was for tax purposes, he explained. Basalyga agreed.
On November 23, 2003, Basalyga closed on the house. He brought a bank check for $7,000. Julia brought a $13,000 for a deposit.
But Yakovlev had his doubts. He was worried someone would move into the house before closing and that tenant could be difficult to evict, Yavovlev told his friend. Basalyga trusted him. Yakovlev was an experienced landlord, and had owned four houses by this point. Basalyga didn’t want any complications.

Later that evening, Basalyga drove to the Manhattan Avenue home. He knocked on Klein’s door. The door was locked. When Klein didn’t answer. He went upstairs and knocked on the door of Klein’s second apartment. Again, no answer.
Confused, Basalyga drove home and phoned Yakovlev.
What happened to Klein, Basalyga asked his friend.
Yakovlev told Basalyga that he saw Klein get into his car, a small white Toyota, and drive away. The next morning, Basalyga drove to the house and found Yakovlev standing in Klein’s apartment, a ring of keys in his hand. A plexiglass window had been knocked out.

Yakovlev explained he had shown up at the house, knocked on a window and then checked the door. It was unlocked and the keys were on a table. When he discovered Klein wasn’t there, he didn’t think anything of the disappearance.
“Imagine an old man getting a lot of money,” Yakovlev told his friend. “He disappeared from everybody and went probably to Florida.”
Klein’s girlfriend later showed up at the house. Klein was supposed to move into her house, but he never showed. Yakovlev called the woman obscene names, telling her that Klein had a lot of money now. He didn’t want anything to do with her.
The two men spent weeks cleaning out Klein’s apartments. Yakovlev volunteered to clean the first floor apartment. Basalyga busied himself with the rest of the property, disposing of four or five air conditioners, buckets of water, a broken-down Ford pick-up truck and pile after pile of junk.

Klein’s apartment was exactly as he left it. His clothes were still there. So were his keys.
Police found Klein’s car in Newark, New Jersey, a rough city 14 miles south of New York City. The car was impounded.
The police, stretched thin in a city that averages more than 60 murders a year, had little time to investigate something a common as an abandoned car. It was filed away to be forgotten.

Yakovlev handed Basalyga another check, telling him to cash it and hand back the money. It was the $7,000 bank check Basalyga had given Klein.
Basalyga was suspicious. He had no idea how Yakovlev got his hands on the check. It didn’t have Basalyga’s name on it, and Yakovlev didn’t seem to realize it was his friend’s check. He confronted Yakovlev the next day.
“That’s the check I gave Michael at closing,” he said. “How did you get it?”
But Yakovlev already had an explanation. When Klein was leaving the house, Yakovlev chased after him, he explained. Klein opened the window and handed him the check, saying “give this to Alex,” before driving off.
Basalyga deposited the check.

Later, Yakovlev surprised Basalyga by renovating the first floor bathroom. Basalyga and his wife were going to move into Klein’s old apartment. But before the couple showed up, Yakovlev gutted the bathroom, replacing the tile and toilet and stripping the bathtub, coating it in fresh paint.
He told Basalyga the bathroom was a gift. It wasn’t the first gift Yakovlev gave Basalyga. He was a generous friend who once gave Basalyga’s wife some jewelry.
The two men would later have a falling out when Yakovlev showed up at Basalyga’s apartment with a stack of documents detailing Klein’s bank and credit card accounts. Yakovlev bragged that he knew everything about Klein, from his social security card to his mother’s maiden name.

“He said that Michael had a lot of money,” Basalyga said, “and since I’m a computer programmer, he asked me to get involved in stealing money from his accounts.”
Yakovlev was furious when Basalyga refused.
“Watch yourself now,” Yakovlev said. “You know more than you should know.”
He later confronted Basalyga as he returned home from celebrating his anniversary with his wife. Yakovlev demanded that Basalyga pay him $100,000 to buy the house from Julia.
The matter had to be settled in court. The proceedings were in English. The men sought the help of a translator named Irina.
That night, the ever-generous Yakovlev offered the woman a ride home.

On August 17, 2009, the Yakovlev’s home became a crime scene as forensic experts scoured the house, looking for hair, a speck of blood, anything that could tie Yakovlev to Malezhik or Klein. They emptied his basement. Later, investigators even tore the floor apart in a bid to find Malezhik’s corpse.

Police never found Malezhik’s body. But what they did find was unsettling.
The basement was littered with construction debris. Yakovelv had recently paid to have the basement floor dug deeper. But he refused to let anyone pour the cement, instead preferring to do the work himself. He had only finished part of the floor before his arrest.
A cadaver-sniffing border collie led agents to a cardboard box stuffed with Christmas decorations and crumpled Russian-language newspapers dated January 2008— the week Malezhik’s disappeared hit the press.

Agents drilled holes in the basement floor. The dog alerted officers to a number of locations, prompting agents to dig up sections of the floor. The dig lasted ten days. They didn’t find anything.
In the boiler room, police found a pair of women’s underwear in a sealed plastic bag. They sent the underwear to an FBI forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia.
In a filing cabinet, agents found a ring of keys and a thick envelope stuffed with pornographic photos of a man who looked a lot like Yakovlev and an unknown woman.
“I immediately linked [the keys] as belonging to Michael Klein because Dmitriy Yakovlev’s apartment was rather small, it was a single family home,” Abrahams said. “The only residence I knew that Dmitriy was associated with that was so extensive to require that number of keys, was 4120 Manhattan.”





https://medium.com/@Vit_Jonathan/the-devil-in-little-odessa-65fd60a46b6e#.ssf9g1n7z
 
FBI agents are looking into what happened to Michael Klein, a civilian employee who fixed cars for the Police Department and vanished after he sold defendant Dmitriy Yakovlev his home in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, three years ago. They're also searching for a Russian man who lived in Newark and may have had ties to Yakovlev, according to a source with the US Attorney's Office who declined to reveal the missing man's name.

http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_of_ours/irina-malezhik/

http://bklyner.com/three-years-behi...ed-dead-manhattan-beach-woman-sheepshead-bay/
 
Here is an image of Michael from one of the articles. His whole store is sad.
 

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I came across this guy parts found in plastic bags in the Bronx in 2003. Has the same MO as how Viktor was found. Maybe this is Michael Klein.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)


Circumstances of RecoveryUnknown male found in plastic bag on sidewalk of Story Avenue. A passerby had noticied the bag about three weeks prior, and went over to investgate after realizing that it had never been removed.
Details of Recovery


Inventory of RemainsOne or both hands not recovered
Condition of RemainsNot recognizable - Decomposing/putrefaction


it’s so sad that they never really took a missing persons report for him considering everything and considering he was a retired mechanic for the NYPD you think they would of done something. This whole thing is really sad.
 

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Case of Irina Malezhik was updated on Charley Project but it says there’s no photos or vital statistics on Michael.
 

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