An Immigrant Becomes a Millionaire But Goes out of Bounds
(“Going for Broke,” Forensic Files)
For a while, Michael Prozumenshikov seemed to be doing everything right. In hopes of a more prosperous life, he came to the U.S. from Soviet-era Russia, where he’d grown up in an apartment crammed with 30 other people.
Fast track. He got a job as a janitor for $63 a week after arriving in Minneapolis, studied finance, and earned a stockbroker’s license.
Amid the 1980s Wall Street bubble, Prozumenshikov grew into a tiger of a salesman. He nabbed a $240,000 signing bonus when Prudential-Bache Securities recruited him as an investment adviser.
Within seven years of coming to America, he was driving a Mercedes, living in a newly constructed 20-room house, and making $1 million a year.
Rich man targeted. But as so with many other Forensic Files subjects (Ari Squire, John Hawkins), his American dream turned into a cautionary tale.
Prozumenshikov’s story, however, differs a bit from the usual because he ended up as the homicide victim rather than the perpetrator.
For this week, I did some research into Prozumenshikov’s background and how he botched the financial fiefdom he created.
Missing husband. So let’s get going on the recap of “Going for Broke,” along with extra information culled from online research and the book The Pru-Bache Murder: The Fast Life and Grisly Death of a Millionaire Stockbroker by Jeffrey Taylor.
At 10:30 p.m. on January 28, 1991, Michael Prozumenshikov called his wife, Ellen, to let her know he was on his way home.
He never arrived.
In pieces. Police found his Mercedes, with his checkbook, credit cards, and some cash inside, in a parking lot in Wayzata.
Soon after, a headless torso and two legs from a caucasian male turned up under some abandoned Christmas trees. The severed tip of a left pinky finger found at the scene and scars on other body parts helped police identify the victim as Michael Prozumenshikov, age 37.
So who would want to kill this respectable family man?
Well, lots of people, it turned out.
Hammer time. Although he labored long hours and aimed high, Prozumenshikov also liked to take short cuts. It was a pattern that started when he still lived in the USSR.
After excelling in hammer-throwing as a boy in Leningrad, Prozumenshikov used his athletic connections to get into dental school there, according to Taylor’s book.
He was a poor-performing student but still managed to network his way into a job as a dentist in a clinic in Russia, according to Taylor.
Career switch. But the U.S. had more-strenuous requirements, and Prozumenshikov failed his dental exams here.
Fortunately, he landed in a more lucrative field thanks to a friend who encouraged him to try a career in finance. He learned quickly and pursued clients — many of them fellow Russian Jewish immigrants — aggressively.
But Prozumenshikov was in too much of a hurry. Greed overtook him, and he made impossible claims to prospective clients, engaged in unauthorized trading, and falsified information.
Few fans. Like most good con men, he had a knack for putting on an optimistic front even as things headed south. He persuaded clients to stay with him despite their losses, according to Taylor.
Although the police had no specific murder suspects at first, they found that a lot of people didn’t feel all that bad to hear about Prozumenshikov’s demise, according to Rocky Fontana, a Hennepin County Sheriff’s detective who appeared on Forensic Files.
First off, Prozumenshikov had begun to separate himself, literally and figuratively, from the Russian Jewish émigré community that had helped make him successful.
Ostentatious style. He, Ellen, and, and their sons, ages 11 and 13, had moved to Wayzata, a lakeside town with a yacht club and median house price of $600,000.
And he liked to flaunt his Rolex watches and Montblanc pens. On his desk, he kept framed photos of cars and houses he aspired to purchase, according to Taylor’s book.
While the Prozumenshikov sons were attending private schools, their father was busy erasing the personal fortunes of the people who trusted him to help them attain better lives for their own kids.
This doesn’t fly. Zina Shirl, who appeared on Forensic Files, said that Prozumenshikov went renegade with $20,000 of her money.
He had also used clients’ money to make disastrous investments in Texas Air, which promptly dived 75 percent in value (and no longer exists), according to Forensic Files.
Even as his clients’ accounts were shrinking, Prozumenshikov would make as many as 100 trades on a single account in a year so he could pocket the commissions
No Shangri-La. He wiped out the $70,000 life savings of a World War II vet named Clem Seifert, who would later enthusiastically volunteer to testify in the killer’s defense.
Prozumenshikov had also persuaded clients to invest in developing a Reno, Nevada, resort that was an utter scam. The project never happened.
Clearly, Prozumenshikov’s death was somehow related to his job. His wife told police that on the night he disappeared, he had called her to ask for his supervisor’s number.
Follow the Mazda. Next, he called his boss from a pay phone to ask for $200,000 in cash for a client. He refused.
Then, Michael Prozumenshikov disappeared.
Police were able to connect a brown 1986 Mazda 626 seen parked near Prozumenshikov’s black Mercedes on the night of the murder to a handsome 39-year-old dam inspector named Zachary Persitz.
The Prozumenshikov and Persitz families were close friends. Their sons had sleepovers together.
Henpecked husband. Persitz, also a member of the local Russian Jewish community, entrusted Prozumenshikov to invest $150,000 for him. A lot was riding on that investment.
Although the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources surely paid Persitz a decent salary, his wife, Julia, a concert violinist, had been needling him about why he couldn’t be as successful as his buddy Michael Prozumenshikov, Fontana told Forensic Files.
But Persitz wouldn’t be buying Julia a McMansion or an E-Class Cabriolet anytime soon. A combination of Prozumenshikov’s mismanagement and the 1987 stock crash diminished Persitz’s wealth by anywhere from $37,000 to $120,000 (sources vary on the amount of the loss).
Paint clue. Shortly after the homicide, a car wash employee wrote down the license plate number of the Mazda after noticing the driver trying to wash blood from inside its trunk. Persitz told the car wash workers he hit a deer.
Police discovered that paint found on Persitz’s bumper looked similar to that from an orange gate near the crime scene. And bumper fragments found there matched those missing from Persitz’s Mazda, whose interior revealed blood splatter.
Authorities also learned that an ax that Persitz kept in his locker at work had gone missing, according to an AP account from 1991.
Wife worried. And the Persitz family had a Bernese mountain dog whose hair matched a strand found at the murder scene (not that the family pet was in on the homicide — shed fur carries and transfers like crazy). County prosecutor Kevin Johnson remarked it was “the first time a search warrant has been executed on a dog in Hennepin County.”
On Feb. 4, 1991, authorities arrested Persitz and set his bail at $750,000.
There was circumstantial evidence against him in addition to the forensics.
Ransom of $200K. The day before the homicide, family friend Rudolph Lekhter and Persitz had gone out shooting at Bill’s Gun Range in Robbinsville.
Prosecutors believed Persitz set up a meeting with Prozumenshikov, then threatened the 6-foot-tall 200-pound-plus stockbroker with a gun and demanded $200,000 to cover his losses plus interest.
When Prozumenshikov couldn’t produce the cash, Persitz shot him (possibly with one of Lekhter’s guns, although he wasn’t implicated), threw him in the trunk, and then headed to a compost site 60 miles away the next day. He crashed threw a gate there and dismembered the body.
Back in the USSR. Once charged, instead of going the usual Forensic Files killer route by claiming the victim attacked him first, Persitz declared himself not guilty by way of insanity.
Judge Robert Shiefelbein delayed the trial so the defense team, led by Joe Friedberg, could obtain Persitz’s 1970s records from a psychiatric hospital in Russia.
Mental health professionals for both the defense and prosecution ultimately agreed Persitz suffered from OCD and severe depression. In fact, the judge agreed to another delay so Persitz could undergo electroconvulsive therapy.
Death wish. Persitz said that, as a child, he had witnessed violence between his parents and had tried to kill himself at age 11.
His claim of suicidal tendencies was credible. While awaiting trial in 1992, Persitz and fellow inmate Russell Lund made a pact to suffocate themselves with plastic bags. Lund succeeded, but deputies reached Persitz in time to save him.
The defense argued that the crime itself was crazy enough to prove insanity. Persitz admitted to shooting Prozumenshikov once on the frozen Lake Minnetonka and again in the Mazda, then hacking up the corpse the next day.
“Clearly, chopping a body up in the early morning hours when it’s 20-below is nonsensical,” defense attorney Paul Engh offered.
Victim of his own success? Still, prosecutor Kevin Johnson made the state’s case that Persitz had been plotting the murder for months and was sane enough to know that killing Prozumenshikov was wrong.
The jury convicted him of the murder on June 23, 1993. In a separate hearing, the panel rejected the insanity plea. He received a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 27½ years.
Widow Ellen Prozumenshikov blamed the murder on Persitz’s “envy” and “greed,” the Tribune Star reported:
“Michael was living his American dream. His dream was suddenly ended by someone who couldn’t bear to see it realized, who couldn’t accept Michael’s life in comparison to his own.”
With the trial over, Ellen, a dental hygienist, also said she hoped to begin the “healing process for our family.”
Down by the river. Persitz’s parole eligibility would have come around in 2021, but he couldn’t wait.
He hanged himself in Stillwater in 2010.
Persitz had admitted that he threw Michael Prozumenshikov’s head and hands — the instruments of his deceits — into the St. Croix River, but they were never found.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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