Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 2 - Going for Broke - Full Episode | Forensic Files

it took a russian immigrant just seven years to rise from a janitor to one of the most successful stock brokers in the
united states then he disappeared a dog hair a piece of plastic and the speck of orange paint were all that
remained in a crime motivated by jealousy and greed [Music] [Music] in the 1970s and 80s people living in
the former soviet union faced a life of hardship and despair some like 23 year old michael
prosimenchikov wanted more he was living a life of deprivation of long lines for food you know of crowded
buses michael actually grew up in an apartment with seven other families living in the same unit
with little to lose michael and his family emigrated to the united states at first michael took a job as a janitor
he worked hard perfected his english and waited for the right opportunity he grasped at the american dream in all
of its incarnations he wanted to have material wealth he wanted to have recognition for being successful at a
career this is a guy who was really driven who had goals and he really set out aggressively to accomplish them
eventually michael earned a license as a stockbroker passed a test for securities
dealers and got an entry-level position in a minneapolis firm when he started out he asked his fellow
russian immigrants for business and they responded generously within seven years
michael was earning well over one million dollars annually and he liked to make sure
everyone knew it and tell you the truth a lot of people didn't like him because he was making such approach
like i am you know big shot whatever i drive a mercedes big deal i drive mercedes too but who cares
on january 28 1991 michael told his wife he'd be working late but he never came home
i said michael didn't come home last night and my wife turned to me right away and
she said i bet he i bet he's dead police found michael's car in the parking lot of lake minnetonka just a
few blocks from his office a police officer actually saw the mercedes park there around midnight that
evening also which was unusual it's an isolated beach a very cold january evening and here's
this mercedes sitting there at the beach michael's briefcase was on the front seat
there was no blood in the car or any sign of violence [Music] investigators found what appeared to be
blood on the frozen surface of the lake a few hundred yards away but tests on the stain were inconclusive
two days passed then a workman at a city compost pile saw a flock of crows hovering around some
discarded christmas trees and i looked in there and it was quite obvious it was a bent section of a human
leg all the way up to the hip you know just that while in this game it's a pretty big guy
investigators also found a human torso the head and the hands were missing so it looked like someone was trying to get
rid of anything that could be identified as far as identifying the body but they did find
the end of a finger tip when police ran the fingerprint they discovered it matched the fingerprint of michael
prozamanshikov's brokerage license law enforcement theorized that michael may have been targeted because he was a
russian immigrant so they urged caution then the fbi called me and said please do not come to the funeral
and i said well why well the word is that you're a friend of his whoever did this could shoot you at the funeral so
don't come to the funeral and i thought wow investigators took this unusual step
because they had no idea why michael was murdered but they did know he had plenty of enemies
in the search for michael prosimanchikov's killer investigators didn't have to look far
for suspects although michael made a lot of money for himself as a stockbroker not all of his clients liked the way he
did it xena shirl says she gave michael twenty thousand dollars but told him to invest
only in stocks that she chose i came to him and i said this is the deal you do not touch it this is whatever
you do what i tell you what to do he said yes almost immediately xena realized michael
was buying and selling stocks in her account without her permission i had a bill from the company that i own
them almost like eight or ten thousand dollars for uh commission buying and selling so i
went to his company and i said mike look this is one in the brokerage business that's called
churning the account buying and selling stocks in a customer's portfolio for the sole
purpose of generating commissions other clients allege that michael promised returns of 18 a year in order
to get their business a practice that's illegal in many states michael he crossed a lot of bridges he it i mean
a lot of illegal things towards them investigators also learned that michael didn't always pick good stocks for
example he bought shares in texas air for many of his clients at 48 per share in a matter of weeks
it fell to 15. i would say most of the people we had talked to that had lost money
were really not that upset that michael had disappeared or that he had been murdered
[Music] we even had several people that said they wish they could have done it on the night michael was reported
missing his wife said he called her around 8 30 he said he was with a client and was working late
she also said michael asked her for his supervisor's home telephone number in phone calls to his wife that night he
spoke russian which she considered unusual michael did not like to speak russian in front of american clients he
considered it rude you'd only speak russian in front of some other russian she just assumed that whoever he was
with was some of the russian later michael called his boss at home with an unusual request
he was asking for money two hundred thousand dollars that he said he needed to raise for a client that night
this of course put everyone on their guard because to get a call from a broker at night seeking two hundred
thousand dollars is highly unusual michael said his client was leaving town early the next day and needed the money
immediately naturally michael's boss said no he just said it's not that we're unwilling to come up with the two
hundred thousand dollars but we certainly aren't going to be able to come with it tonight
and michael's boss said that he made a strange reference to a boat what he said was didn't you tell me that
you that your father gave you 200 000 to buy a boat to help you buy a boat well his supervisor hadn't told him
anything like that and his supervisor later concluded and later told the police that he suspected
that michael was trying to send an alarm of some kind by reminding him of a conversation that had
never happened the medical examiner believes that michael was killed later that night
it's difficult to be precise but because he wasn't completely frozen i didn't think he'd been out there longer
police found michael's torso his legs and a piece of his finger on the tarp with the torso
investigators found a single black hair it was very fine and had kind of a crimped appearance to
it it's not indicative of a human hair microscopic examination revealed it was a dog hair
the medulla or central core of animal hairs can help identify the breed in this case analysts determined the
hair was from a bernese mountain dog which is tri-colored and usually very large
the only other evidence that the scene was on the gate that led to the garbage dump
it looked as if a car had hit it to force it open there was some brownish paint transfers on the gate at the
compost site from the gate being pushed open by a car and there was a small plastic fragment
that looked like a piece of the car's bumper a witness told police that he saw michael's black mercedes
benz in the lake parking lot next to a small brown vehicle similar in color to the piece of bumper found at the compost
site he also stated that the car possibly could have been a mazda626 it looked consistent
with a mazda626 this narrowed the list of suspects considerably they were looking for
someone driving a brown mazda who had a bernese mountain dog and was one of michael's clients
while investigating the murder of stockbroker michael prasimanchikov investigators learned he had many
disgruntled customers he had also been soliciting investors to build a resort in reno nevada to be
managed by a company called omni financial quite a bit of money that investors put into this scheme
and it ended up that actually the address for omni financial was in the middle of the desert it was an
old deserted shabby motel vacant is really what the address was where this resort was supposed to be the
investment was a scam and this created even more unhappy customers authorities believe that money was
probably the motive for michael prozamenshikov's murder news of michael prossimenschikov's
murder generated a number of potential leads including one from employees of a local
car wash they said they had an odd encounter with the customer the morning after michael's
body was found the customer requested we get some hunting blood out of his trunk
which got us thinking a little bit a little you know a little strange they said it was a brown mazda
and they gave police the license number pnn393 the car was registered to zachary
persits a 39-year-old russian emigre who worked as a dam inspector for the state
of minnesota he was a friend of michael's when he first met michael he was more established than michael was and then
michael got into the brokerage business and michael's earnings eclipsed those of
zachary they met in this country they didn't know each other in the old country their wives were friends
persit was married had two children and was well known and respected within the russian immigrant community
very nice very musical very intelligent i remember zachary is a good artist this guy was the greatest guy in the
world he wouldn't hurt a flea if you interviewed them they'd say he was a great neighbor
kept to himself never bothered anybody but pressets and michael were more than just friends
michael was purseit's financial advisor their relationship was rocky at best investigators discovered that pursets
gave michael 150 000 to invest but there were more losses than profits at some point percitz discovered his stock
portfolio was worth less than thirty thousand dollars for the most part they weren't
investments that were suitable for a guy that invested every nickel he had with michael when questioned by police
persits denied any involvement in michael's murder and he willingly took a lie detector test arranged by his lawyer
my investigator and co-counsel had developed a suspicion that he hadn't done this and so
i called a polygrapher and had zachary tell him that he hadn't done it and he passed
and forensic testing could not determine the origin of the blood in persit's trunk
at the time dna testing wasn't as sophisticated as it is today back then the dna testing procedures
that were used required dna to be what's called high molecular weight we needed dna that hadn't gone through any
degradation processes at all but investigators did find some suspicious damage to percid's car
it had damage to the front right end the paint was scraped and the bumper was broken
the scratches on the bumper had what appeared to be tiny specks of orange paint which were removed with a small probe
the samples we're talking about are perhaps the size of a period or a small dot with a pencil
so we're talking microscopic sized chips paint the paint sample was compared to the
paint from the broken gate using a process called a solubility analysis chemical solubility tests are a series
of reagents solvents or reagents that may cause color reactions or cause it to dissolve or swell or do
something color change and if they are similar that means that the paints could have had a common source
the test showed that the paint on purseit's bumper could have come from the gate but the sample was too small to
be conclusive but the piece of broken bumper found near the gate was of more value
the forensic analysis revealed it could only have come from one source it was just a perfect match they were unevenly
cracked so the odds of the pieces that they recovered from the compost site being a
perfect even match to zachary's car the odds of coming from some other source were
so amazing that they've they just decided this had to come from zachary's car and investigators learned that persits
owned a dog with long black hair which proved to be microscopically similar to the single
dog hair found with michael's body [Music] finally investigators sprayed the inside of
persit's car with luminol it revealed evidence of a gun shot it looked like a stars there were
hundreds of spots on the roof of the headliner of the car which would have been consistent with the high velocity
missed if someone gets shot in the head this indicated that michael was sitting in the driver's seat of persit's car
when he was killed investigators found a receipt in persit's office for a pair of handcuffs
that could have been used in the abduction i mean they had the receipt they had the
guy that he bought them from zachary persitz was arrested and charged with first degree murder
even his lawyer acknowledged the strength of the prosecution's case trying this case was like being a human
punching bag [Music] prosecutors believe that zachary persits was enraged by the way his friend
michael prozamancikov handled his money he watched his 150 thousand dollars dwindle to less than thirty thousand
dollars he came upon hard times he was not going to be able to pay the tuition for
private school he was not going to be able to make his mortgage payments and that's
where the dynamics of zachary pursets began to change he was unable to stand the pressure of
seeing all of his dreams vanish at the same time zachary persit saw that michael was
living quite well on the commissions generated from all the stock transactions zachary's wife oftentimes would compare
their lifestyle to michael's lifestyle saying things like michael has a big house why
don't we have a big house michael has a mercedes why don't we have a mercedes and on and on
prosecutors believe wanted revenge the evidence suggests percit set up a meeting with michael after work they met
in the parking lot at lake minnetonka [Music] once there percits threatened michael with a gun
and demanded his money back with interest so michael called his boss at home asking him for 200 000
but his boss refused [Music] persits handcuffed michael to the steering wheel of his car and ordered
michael to drive to a deserted location [Music] [Applause] [Music] and then killed him
persits put michael's body in the trunk and drove to the compost site about 60 miles away
percepts broke through the gate with the car's bumper leaving a small piece behind
after dismembering michael's body presets wrapped the torso in a tarp unbeknownst to him a single black hair
from his pet dog was on the top [Music] the rest of michael's body and the gun have never been recovered
he thought he could pull off this homicide and not get caught because he had it all planned out and he didn't
realize how tough it is to hide trace evidence forensic evidence it's always going to be there
zachary persitz pled not guilty by reason of insanity the jury however rejected that and found
him guilty of first degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison for michael prozamanshikov
the american dream had turned into a tragedy but the trail of evidence left no doubt
who was responsible the forensic evidence was the case the investigators did an overwhelming and professional job
the old expression is if you think you know how to commit the perfect crime there are 50 ways to get up and you're a
genius if you can figure out 25 of them [Music] [Music] [Music] you

A successful stockbroker told his wife he'd be working late, and when he didn't come home, she reported him missing.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Michael Prosimanchikov's rise as a stockbroker ends in murder, with Zachary Persits arrested for the crime driven by financial disputes.

Key points

The Rise of Michael. A Russian immigrant rises from janitor to millionaire stockbroker in just seven years.
The Mysterious Disappearance. Michael's sudden disappearance raises alarms and suspicions among his loved ones.
A Shocking Discovery. Investigators find human remains linked to Michael, leading to a murder investigation.
The Tragic Outcome. The pursuit of the American dream ends in tragedy for Michael and his family.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Michael told his wife he'd be working late, but he never came home.

2:29WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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