A New York City dominatrix is on trial for attempting to murder her lookalike eyelash stylist with a poisoned cheesecake in an attempt to steal her identity.
Viktoria Nasyrova, 47, who made a living playing bondage games with paying clients, appeared in court on Monday to stand trial for allegedly trying to kill Olga Tsvyk in 2016.
Tsvyk testified that Nasyrova came to her Queens home in August of 2016 for an unscheduled eyelash appointment, and dosed her with laced cheesecake.
“She told me, ‘I’m right now in Brooklyn. I want to bring you some famous cheesecake from a famous bakery,'” Tsvyk told the court on Monday.
“I told her, Viktoria, that’s not needed, just come over.’”
When Nasyrova arrived she ate two pieces of the cheesecake herself, and fed one to Tzvyk that left her feeling “very ill” immediately after ingesting.
“I started to look to lie down on the bed. I started to look for a pillow,” she recalled.
I was realizing that I was losing consciousness and I said to her, ‘Vika, I’m feeling really bad.’”
“I started feeling very nauseous. I wanted to vomit. I started to vomit right by my bed onto the floor,” Tzvyk explained to jurors.
Prosecutors alleged that the cheesecake was laced with a tranquilizer called Phenazepam and the cake box itself was covered in Nasyrova’s DNA.
After the alleged poisoning, the dominatrix stole her lookalike’s passport, and tried to make the scene look like a suicide attempt by spilling pills near Tzvyk’s body.
Fortunately for Tzvyk, she was discovered by her sister Olga before the poison could kill her.
“She was feeling very bad and she just looked at me, she looked like a vegetable,” she explained through an interpreter.
“She was extremely tired. She could barely move her eyes. It looked like she was asleep.”
Her sister also testified that the scene was staged to look like Tzvyk had attempted to commit suicide.
“I also noticed near the bed, under the bed and also near the chest, there were pills,” she told the court.
“They were white color, round. I collected them and put [them] aside. It was either in a bag or napkin, something. I put it aside.”
In an opening statement, the prosecutor said that Nasyrova was smug in an interview with arresting officers.
“She was asked this specific question … ‘There is a woman named Olga who looks a lot like you who said that you poisoned her with a piece of cheesecake in order to steal her identity,’” Assistant District Attorney Konstantinos Litourgis told the court.
“You know what this defendant did when she was asked that question? She smiled,” he continued.
“And you know what her answer was? ‘I can tell you I know this person. I know who you mean. I did not force her to eat the cheesecake.’”
He noted that Tzvyk isn’t Nasyrova’s first victim, as she pleaded guilty to attempted petite larceny in 2019, for drugging and stealing from dates she met through online apps.
She is also wanted in Russia for allegedly drugging and murdering her neighbor in 2014.
If convicted in New York, Nasyrova faces up to 25 years in prison.
In another case for never meeting your doppelganger, a German woman scoured social media for her lookalike and allegedly murdered her over the summer.
The unnamed woman created fake Instagram accounts and contacted four similar looking women.
When she reached out to the fifth, she was able to lure her reported victim to a German forest and kill her in August.
The victim was nearly unrecognizable when her body was discovered by police on Aug. 16.
Her body was found in the suspect’s car with over 50 stab wounds to her face and body.
After performing an autopsy, authorities determined that despite looking “strikingly similar,” the victim was not the same person that owned the car.
German police arrested the doppelganger and her boyfriend, both 23, on Aug. 22.
Authorities said the pair had “insidiously” selected the victim, so the female murderer’s family would believe she was dead and the couple could run off together.