Portrait Of A Modern Sex Slave Trader
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Comment
By David Irving
11-10-3
I have reported once or twice before on the Israeli involvement in two major
criminal activities, the global trafficking in women from former Soviet bloc
countries, and the mass production of Ecstasy narcotics.
In Canada, a country which uses its immigration laws to notable effect to
suppress free speech and thought, as Ernst Zündel -- who has languished for
ten months in an immigration jail can testify -- the same authorities seem
to be remarkably lax towards such real criminals.
A correspondent in Ontario reports this morning to me:
Host Michael Vaughan of Report on Business Television's (ROBtv) "Michael
Vaughan Live" aired an interview with journalist Victor Malarek on Nov 8,
2003. The interview had been shown live earlier that week. Malarek had come
on to promote his book The Natashas, subtitled "The New Global Sex
Trade" --the subject of his new book.
During the interview, Malarek bemoaned the very lax Canadian immigration
practices that allow a notorious pimp to live in Canada with impunity.
To underscore his disgust, Malarek cited aspects of Ludwig Fainberg's
criminal history. What troubled Malarek was the seeming unwillingness of
Canadian authorities to act to deport Fainberg from Canada.
In the book (see extract, left), Malarek had ended his sketch of Fainberg
thus: "Canadian Immigration swooped in and arrested Fainberg in his
comfortable Ottawa lair. He was labeled a threat to national security and
public safety, and ordered deported to Israel."
But according to Malarek, Fainberg is still among us, free to enjoy his
ill-gotten wealth, notwithstanding an Immigration Canada deportation order.
Perhaps Elinor Caplan (above), the latest immigration minister of our once
great Dominion, can explain her indulgence of this gangster. They evidently
share the same religion, true, but in every other respect she certainly has
all the looks of the feminist battler for women's rights. What has blunted
the battleaxe?
We invite readers to find and submit a portrait photo of her Schützling, Mr
Fainberg.
Here's the sketch of Ludwig Fainberg's criminal career as drawn in Malarek's
study of the international sex trade, The Natashas (Viking Canada: Toronto,
2003, pp. 51-57) ---
Wanted to find out just how difficult it is to purchase young Slavic women
for the sex trade. It is, as I discovered, really quite easy. All that's
needed is a connection and cold hard cash.
The meeting took place in an apartment in Ottawa, Canada's capital city, on
a brisk, snowy night in early January 2003. I was a bit nervous. The man I
was to meet was no ordinary low-level thug. Ludwig Fainberg is a notorious
Israeli mobster with a hair-trigger temper and a penchant for extreme
violence. According to FBI documents, he was the middleman for an
international drugs and weapons smuggling conspiracy linking Colombian drug
lords with the Russian Mafia in Miami. Fainberg's claim to fame was that in
the mid-1990s, he ventured onto a high-security naval base in the far
northern reaches of Russia. His mission was to negotiate the purchase of a
Russian Cold War-era diesel submarine -- complete with a retired naval
captain and a twenty-five-man crew -- for the Columbian cocaine cartel. The
price tag: a cool $5.5 million. The vessel was to be used to smuggle tons of
white powder along the California coast. The deal fell through.
From 1990 until he was arrested and charged in Miami in February 1997 for
smuggling and racketeering, Fainberg ran an infamous strip club called
Porky's. The pink neon club on the fringe of Miami International Airport was
a magnet for Russian hoods and sleazy East European émigrés with misbegotten
fortunes and visions of untapped criminal proceeds.
Fainberg's rise through ROC [Russian organized crime] ranks is the stuff of
Hollywood B-movies. He was born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1958. When he was
thirteen he and his parents immigrated to Israel. Later, he tried out for
the Israeli Marines, wanting to become a Navy Seal. He flunked basic
training. Then he wanted to become an officer in the Israeli Army but failed
the exam. His over-inflated ego bruised, he decided to try his luck
elsewhere. In 1980 he packed a suitcase and headed for Berlin, where he
earned his stripes as a street-level goon in extortion and credit card
fraud. Four years later he set out for the United States -- a land he fondly
refers to as "the Wild West because it is so easy to steal there!"
He settled in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, which had become the seat
of the Organizatsiya, as the Russian mob is often called. There he linked up
with the mob and specialized in arson -- torching businesses competing with
those that were Russian owned. 1990 he moved to Miami to run Porky's. Nine
years later he was convicted on racketeering charges and sentenced to
thirty-seven months in prison. Since he had already spent thirty months in
jail awaiting trial, Fainberg was deported to Israel. The next year he
turned up in Canada with dreams of making it rich in the flesh trade. Not
long after his arrival he married a Canadian and moved into a comfortable
apartment along the Ottawa River with his new bride and his ten-year-old
daughter from a previous marriage.
I entered the well-appointed two-bedroom flat and Fainberg stared hard into
my face as we shook hands. He's a burly man with a thin goatee and
short-cropped hair, and he was clearly sizing me up. I must have passed. He
gripped my hand firmly and escorted me to the living room, which was
outfitted with the latest gizmos in video and audio entertainment. I sank
down into a soft, black kid-leather couch while he retreated to the kitchen
to get a couple of imported beers.
"You can call me Tarzan," he began as he burst back into the room. With a
proud boyish grin, he tossed me one of his business cards. The cover of the
custom-made two-fold card sported the caricature of a mop-topped muscular
man under the name of Porky's. The inside featured a cartoon of an ample
nude woman bending over in knee-high stiletto-heeled boots. Underneath was
his name -- "Tarzan Da Boss" -- and on the opposite side "Welcome to Planet
Sex, Land of Fantasy." According to Fainberg, he was nicknamed Tarzan
because he once sported a wild mane of hair and acted as though he was
straight out of a jungle. These days, for travel and immigration purposes,
he's known as Alon Bar. The former strip-club owner legally changed his name
during his last pit stop in Israel.
The man is a consummate braggart. For the better part of the evening he
crowed about his illicit escapades and nefarious underworld connections and
boasted that his life would make a spectacular Hollywood movie. He even
talked about penning his memoirs. "It would be number one on the New York
Times bestseller list." But there's one aspect of his life he probably
wouldn't want revealed in any book. Fainberg relishes putting women in their
place. In one violent incident in Miami, undercover agents with the FBI and
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency watched from a safe distance as he chased a
stripper out of Porky's and slammed her head repeatedly against the door of
his Mercedes until the car was covered. In another episode, he beat a dancer
in the parking lot outside the club and then made her eat gravel. Clearly,
he was no gentleman, and every woman in his club knew it. Incredibly, he
attributes this mean streak to his upbringing: "In Russia, it's quite normal
for men to slap women. It is cultural. It is part of life."
Fainberg prefers to see himself as an astute businessman, and if there's a
business he firmly grasps, it's the flesh trade. "It can make you a
millionaire in no time," he said, winking. His Canadian dream was to open a
strip club in Gatineau, Quebec. The club, across the bridge from the
nation's capital, would feature imported talent -- Russian and Ukrainian
strippers and lap dancers. When I met with him he was shopping for a
Canadian partner and trolling for an infusion of cash. I asked Tarzan what
he would bring to the deal. He recited his know-how and his unique expertise
in importing entertainment.
After an hour I shifted the conversation to the issue at hand: buying women.
With an earnest, businesslike expression, Fainberg said flat-out that it was
an easy feat -- he could bring women in from Russia, Ukraine, Romania or the
Czech Republic. "No problem. The price is $10,000 with the girl landed. It
is simple. It is easy to get access to the girls. It's a phone call. I know
the brokers in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kyiv. I can call Moscow tomorrow
and show you how easy it is. I can get ten to fifteen to twenty girls
shipped to me in a week." Clearly, he had done this many times before.
"They know exactly what they're being hired to do?" I asked. "They're not
being forced."
"They know why they are coming and what they are going to do. They will not
be any trouble," he assured me.
Guardedly I mentioned that while surfing the internet, I had tripped on FBI
and U.S. State Department documents that said he "likely trafficked in
women." That got his attention. As he shifted to the edge of his seat,
Fainberg's eyes flashed in indignation. "That is bullshit. I never
trafficked in women. I don't need trafficked women. Agents in Russia are
overwhelmed with women who want to do this voluntarily. If you look at their
living conditions in Russia, there is no way of surviving. They live in
poverty. At least this way, they can make a living. When people need to eat,
what are you going to do?"
"Given what you've just said, they're not really prostitutes," I
interjected.
Fainberg paused for a moment, mulling over my words. Then with a laugh, he
shot back: "My opinion is a prostitute is someone who is selling herself.
From that point of view that is what they are. It is true they definitely do
not want to do this. They are being pushed by their social level of their
life. They're getting pushed by necessity. They're being pushed to survive.
Then maybe they're not really prostitutes."
He even held himself out as a Good Samaritan: "The girls come here and they
send some money home and the family lives. If they don't come to work here
or in Germany or England, their family suffers. I give the girls a chance to
earn money. For me, it is a business transaction, plain and simple, but I am
also helping these women out."
"I've heard that a lot of these women have no idea they're going into
prostitution when they accept these so-called job offers to work abroad," I
countered. "In fact, I've read that a lot of them think they're going to be
waitresses or hotel cleaning staff."
Fainberg held his fire.
I find that difficult to believe. I was present on many occasions when girls
were being hired. Plus, at somepoint I had over twenty girls from Russia,
Ukraine and Romania who came to work in the States. Maybe some of them don't
know. But how stupid do you have to be that you are going to a different
country to work as a waitress or dancer in a club? It is really stupidity.
It's dumb. Women know what they are going for. Sometimes when they realize
their mistakes or they're getting hurt, its easy to blame somebody else for
being so dumb. I think they should only blame themselves for getting into
that.
He grudgingly conceded that some of these women are duped. "I think 10
percent don't know what they're getting into. Ninety percent know exactly
what they're going to do. What they may not know exactly is the conditions
or how much money they will get."
"You don't have a problem with pushing women who are absolutely destitute
into prostitution?"
"Look, that's what they can offer. Life is a business. It's a trade. You
want to give something for nothing? You can help once or twice. But then
ten, twenty or forty times? For that you want to get something in return."
"What kind of money are we talking here?" I asked. "How much will it cost to
bring a woman over, and what kind of profit can be made?"
"If it is run the proper way, the clean way, you can have a good clientele
and make a lot of money. You can buy a woman for $10,000 and you can make
your money back in a week if she is pretty and she is young. Then everything
else is profit."
I asked about getting the women into Canada or the United States.
"It is so simple, so very simple," he bragged. "You know after 9/11 how
difficult it was supposed to be to get into the United States? I will show
you right now how easily we can get into the United States and then come
back, and nobody will ever know we were in there." He went on to hint that
certain Russian mobsters have connections with Native gangs whose reserves
straddle the Canada-U.S. border.
A couple of days later, Canadian Immigration swooped in and arrested
Fainberg in his comfortable Ottawa lair. He was labeled a threat to national
security and public safety, and ordered deported to Israel.
© Focal Point 2003 David Irving