On the night of June 6, 2019, a ninth-grade student, Elizaveta Popova, woke up in one of the rooms of a suburban mansion with a swimming pool near Moscow. Liza did not know exactly where she was. She had no phone — it had been taken away the day before. “A big bed, expensive furniture, a large, expensive chandelier,” the girl later recalled the surroundings. A driver in a grey Audi had brought her. A housekeeper served her dinner and put her to bed. Then a man entered the bedroom. He did not introduce himself but had sex with 15-year-old Popova. Twenty minutes later, the man left, Liza took a shower, and fell asleep again. The next morning, June 7, the visit was repeated. Before leaving, the man handed the schoolgirl a book, which contained 150,000 rubles (about $2,300 at that time — Ed.).
That same evening, the driver in the grey Audi took Popova to a five-story apartment in Moscow with an elevator and a home cinema. After fifteen minutes of sex and another 150,000 rubles, the driver took Liza to the Bolshoi Theatre — “to some opera,” as the schoolgirl herself recalls.
In 2020, this episode was investigated by detectives in a criminal case against pimps who had involved teenage girls in prostitution.
One of Popova’s interrogations in February 2020 was recorded on video. Dmitry Pakhomov, an investigator of the Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, asked Liza clarifying questions — whether it was painful for her (yes), whether a condom was used (no), whether the sex ended in ejaculation and where (yes, on her stomach), and so on. Popova stated at the interrogation that the sex was “in natural form.” The investigator asked whether she understood what “natural form” meant. Liza replied: “Without perversions.”
The investigator also asked whether the schoolgirl had told the man her age. She replied that she had not and added, “I think he didn’t know my age. But maybe he could have known.” Popova at first did not name the client. But at subsequent interrogations, she said that she lost her virginity to “the famous billionaire Oleg Deripaska.”
“Too many people wanted to stay in touch with me”
The meeting between the schoolgirl and the man she would later call Oleg Deripaska was organized by five people: Svetlana Titova, Alexandra Shantyreva, Olga Goncharova, Maksim Nekozyrev, and Anastasia Yakusheva. They became the defendants in the criminal case opened in 2019 in Priozersk, Leningrad Oblast.
The network for recruiting girls operated for at least two years (2018–2019) under the cover of regional, often children’s, beauty contests, modeling agencies, dating sites, and themed groups on messengers.
According to detectives from the Investigative Committee, one of the key roles in this network was played by 51-year-old Svetlana Titova. She grew up in Mordovia, where in the 2000s she founded her first modeling agency, Lel. Later, Titova organized several local beauty contests: Miss Carnival, Miss Bust, and Beauty of Mordovia. In 2017, their participants that Svetlana recruited them into her agency and promised good income.
The network for recruiting girls operated for at least two years (2018–2019) under the cover of regional, often children’s, beauty contests, modeling agencies, dating sites, and themed groups on messengers.
According to detectives from the Investigative Committee, one of the key roles in this network was played by 51-year-old Svetlana Titova. She grew up in Mordovia, where in the 2000s she founded her first modeling agency, Lel. Later, Titova organized several local beauty contests: Miss Carnival, Miss Bust, and Beauty of Mordovia. In 2017, their participants said “Mad Max”
Maksim Nekozyrev had been involved in swimming, boxing, football, and shooting since childhood, and “was drawn to the company of peers with antisocial behavior,” “was restless,” according to case materials.
He took part in both Chechen war campaigns, was wounded, and concussed. After demobilization, Nekozyrev played for the reserve team of Moscow’s football club Spartak but was injured and returned home to Astrakhan.
Once back in his hometown, he began to drink heavily, but still participated in boxing matches. During this time, Nekozyrev’s friends called him “Mad Max.” In 2005, he was arrested for a series of robberies. After his first prison term, Nekozyrev spent only a short period free before being convicted again for theft and robbery, spending several years in prison and in a psychiatric hospital, where he underwent compulsory treatment, and was released on parole in 2012.
Once free, Nekozyrev was constantly finding “business projects.” “Prostitutes, brothels, saunas, VIP people, I worked with them,” he explained to investigators. Judging by transcripts of his phone conversations with friends, the business was not successful. Then, as Nekozyrev himself explained, he had the idea to set up a modeling agency in Moscow “to select models for their subsequent use in advertising events.” In 2017, he created the website Fashion Life Rublevka (Rublevka is the unofficial name for a prestigious and expensive residential area west of Moscow — IStories) and went to Moscow to hold castings in the Afimall City shopping center.
After two months of model castings, he learned that “there are oligarchs, wealthy people, for whom parties are arranged.” These were handled by someone named “Vika Gazprom.” Nekozyrev wrote to her that he had “a modeling agency on Rublyovka” and “a huge number of new models.” When they met, “Vika Gazprom” turned out to be Svetlana Titova. She introduced him to her scouts — employees who searched for new, as they called them, “fresh” girls for clients.
5.1, 6.1, “filling,” “nulls”
According to Nekozyrev, Svetlana Titova and her scout Alexandra Shantyreva said they “specifically need minors” — 15-16-year-olds. The pimps called them “5.1” or “6.1”: “That’s a high-value goods,” Nekozyrev explained to the investigator. “They [Titova and Shantyreva] said they don’t deal with prostitutes; they’re interested in the ‘maintenance’ of these girls. When they’re looking for a girl of 15-16, she must be pure, flexible, and a virgin. After that, this girl is introduced to the client, usually a billionaire, and there are plenty of those in Moscow. What is ‘maintenance’? The girl is given a fitness club membership, an allowance, and sometimes even a driver, along with huge sums of money. The income is split 50/50 with the manager.”
“In this business, minors were the most valued — so-called Lolitas, nymphets,” one of the witnesses involved in prostitution, Anna Izotova, confirmed to IStories. “No one is as valued as a 16-year-old, not a single one.” Minors “were mostly ordered by big shots,” she recalls. “Maybe it’s a trend, maybe a fetish,” Izotova said. “What always surprised me more was that the minors themselves weren’t particularly against it.”
Nekozyrev began offering “minors” to Titova, but they were refused with term “used”: “‘Used’ means the girl had already been scouted by some manager and had already participated in activities of an intimate nature, so she’s not interesting to wealthy people,” Nekozyrev later explained to investigators. In their correspondence, pimps called rich clients “billionaires,” and the teenagers they required — “nulls.”
If a virgin couldn’t be found, they would “make” one: pimps would mix red food coloring with glycerin, fill it in a needleless syringe, and give it to the girl. Before intercourse, she would inject that into her vagina. In pimp slang, this procedure was called a “filling.” The dye would stain the sheets and, according to the scenario, at that moment, the girl was supposed to blush, apologize to the man, and say, “I didn’t know there would be blood.”
In addition to the syringe with red liquid, girls were given some tablets, after which they complained of burning and pain in the vagina. According to one witness, these were likely burnt alum — they dry out the mucous membrane and narrow the vaginal walls.
Virgins were brought to Moscow from various regions of Russia; some stayed in the apartment of scout Olga Goncharova. There were “walkthroughs” filmed: videos of 5–10 seconds in which a girl walked in her underwear and introduced herself in Russian and English, listing her measurements.
To meet the clients’ requirements, scouts sometimes forged documents: they would add years to the age of minors if someone demanded the girl be over 18, or, conversely, when a client asked for a schoolgirl, the pimps would send a young-looking 19- or 20-year-old.
Before meetings with “billionaires,” scouts required the girls to provide tests for STDs. After an examination, virgins were issued certificates confirming an intact hymen, which Goncharova sent to clients. She also sometimes used these certificates to photoshop in the names and passport data of non-virgins.
Scouts were constantly searching for new girls. For example, in wiretaps, there is a conversation between Olga Goncharova and her friend Natalia, who herself provided sex services and looked for new “girls.”
“She said in the evening she wanted to try it, and in the morning said she couldn’t go through with it,” Natalia lamented. “I told her: ‘Well, you know, as practice shows, some time will pass and you’ll say you were a fool.’ … She’s got bats in the belfry.”
Later, they discussed another “girl” and her client:
— “She’s a child, you know… I still worried, it’s still a kid, even if not my own, but still a kid,” Natalia said.
— “They’re fucking worse than us, believe me,” Goncharova reassured her.
“Hi, honey, I do have some new girls, but I kept quiet because I was trying to figure out what they want from life. They’re all homebodies, lazy, always at school.’ Why do they even bother with this? Right now, I’ve got just two new ones in Moscow,” another pimp complained in a different chat.
“NULLS” “I had a meeting with Deripaska Oleg”
The first minor that Maksim Nekozyrev managed to find was 17-year-old Irina Saprykina from Izhevsk.
The criminal case contains the testimony of her mother:
“We were always in need of money; neither my daughter nor I had any luxury items. When my daughter got older, she would come home from school and complain to me that her classmates had mobile phones, etc., but she didn’t. I explained to her that I couldn’t buy her everything she wanted because my salary was small. I saw she was upset about it, and it made me feel bad, but I couldn’t do anything.”
Saprykina herself told the investigator that at 17, she came across “an ad on Telegram about recruiting girls for a modeling agency providing escort services in the UAE,” wrote to the number, sent her photos, a “walkthrough” video, and a copy of her passport. In response, she received tickets to Abu Dhabi.
In the UAE, Saprykina spent five days at the villa of a sheikh named Hamdan, where other girls told her that “besides escort services, they also provide sexual services for money to different men both in Russia and abroad.” They showed her Telegram channels where clients could be found.
In March 2019, 17-year-old Saprykina responded to an ad in one of these Telegram channels. The manager, Alina, “offered her to go to Deripaska Oleg to provide sexual services,” the girl said during her interrogation.
Saprykina was picked up from her rented Moscow apartment by a driver who asked her to give him her phone. “In the private house, which I will recognize for sure if I see it again, I had a meeting with Deripaska Oleg. I provided him with sexual services. In the morning, I was taken back to Moscow,” Saprykina recalled.
According to Irina, she was supposed to have another meeting with Deripaska, but it was canceled.
“He said he would help me in life. I was a naive fool, and I believed him”
In the spring of 2019, according to Saprykina, she saw an ad “for recruiting girls to work as models” in a Telegram chat. She wrote to the author, who replied as Maksim Nekozyrev. She called him and said she wanted “to grow as a model.” Nekozyrev asked her to send photos, a “walkthrough” video, and her passport data. Soon, he sent her a contract with the Fashion Live Rublevka modeling agency, which, in reality, had neither a legal entity nor an office — Nekozyrev himself told investigators this.
After speaking with Saprykina, Nekozyrev offered her to Titova, “who needed minors.” She replied that the girl had already “been seen” in Moscow, so she was unfit for her clients. Then Nekozyrev’s partner, Anastasia Yakusheva, took on the role of pimp and started looking for men for Saprykin
The first client was found in a few days (his name is not in the case file). Saprykina recalled that she flew to Moscow and met with the client in an apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt with a view of Moscow City. “At first we lay on the bed, chatted. Then he put money in my bag,” Irina recalled at the interrogation. “He started getting close, hugging, kissing me. I understood what I was getting into, but at first, I was shy; my palms were sweaty. Then I saw the money in the bag (60,000 rubles, around $900), I had never had that much money.”
After the first client, Yakusheva and Nekozyrev quickly found another. “Maksim said he was very cool and that we would just go to a restaurant. He said he would help me in life. I was a naive fool; I believed him.” In the end, after 30 minutes of sex with a grey-haired man, he put 15,000 rubles (around $230— Ed.) on the table and left.
“After that, I was hit by emotions,” Saprykina told investigators. “I said I wanted to go home.”
“This is sex for money, you don’t need to do this”
“The men knew I was 17, they asked, as well as where I studied, what city I was from,” Irina recalled during her interrogation about that trip to Moscow. “I answered that I was 17, studying to be an economist, that I was a model, and so on.”
Irina brought 40,000 rubles (around $600 — Ed.) back to Izhevsk from Moscow; the rest went to Nekozyrev and Yakusheva, who took 20–40% of the fee. Irina told her mother she had a boyfriend who would help financially. “My mom scolded me,” Saprykina added.
At the end of April 2019, Nekozyrev sent — at that time, still a minor — Irina, on a job to St. Petersburg. Some time later, he asked her to go to the same client again, but Saprykina refused. Nekozyrev “got angry, but also threatened to post my data on the ‘Rynok Shkur’ group (in English “Ho Market” — Telegram channel whose admins are disclosing sex workers— Ed.),” Irina said at the interrogation. “He also said that if I didn’t go, some Chechens would come and rape my mother.” Irina gave in and flew to St. Petersburg.
Back home, Saprykina met with her 15-year-old friend Elizaveta Popova at a cafe. After drinking, the girl told the schoolgirl that she “had been with men, and they gave her money for sex.”
According to Saprykina, she started that conversation because Nekozyrev “demanded to recruit someone from my underage friends into prostitution.” “When I started remembering all this, I had a breakdown. Tears started pouring,” Saprykina said. But she gave Nekozyrev’s number to Liza anyway and later shot a “walkthrough” video of Popova.
Irina claimed she told Liza, “This is sex for money, you don’t need to do this.” But Popova said, “I’ve made my choice and want to try, especially since she had read Nastya Rybka’s book (Belarus model who wrote the book ‘Who Wants to Seduce a Billionaire,’ in which she described in detail a trip on a yacht with Oleg Deripaska and former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko).
Saprykina continued working as a prostitute: she flew to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, Turkey, and the UAE. She earned up to 200,000 rubles (around $3,000 — Ed.) per trip. “My mom never saw that money; I spent it all on cafes, restaurants, clothes,” she said.
“I suddenly realized I was too far from home and not in control of the situation”
Ninth-grader Elizaveta Popova, in her testimony, remembered that conversation in the cafe with Saprykina differently. “Ira always showed me expensive phones, fancy cosmetics, and perfumes, and she was always dressed in expensive brand clothes. During the cafe meeting, she showed me Instagram accounts of beautiful girls with fancy cars (Mercedes and so on). She said I could wear such things, earn a lot, and drive fancy cars, too. I agreed because I wanted to go to Moscow, wanted to earn money to open my own business, a beauty salon.”
Two weeks after Saprykina shot the ‘walkthrough’ of her friend in lingerie and sent it to Nekozyrev, a reply came.
— “Saprykina wrote that a man liked me, who later turned out to be Deripaska.”
— “Who is that?” The investigator asks Popova.
— “He’s a famous billionaire.”
— “Did you know who he was?”
— “Yes.”
— “And how?”
— “I found it online.”
— “Why didn’t you mention him in your initial interrogations?”
— “Because I was worried for my family, because he’s a very powerful person.”
“I didn’t mention him earlier because he’s a very famous person and I just didn’t want to bring it up,” Popova clarified in a later interrogation in February 2020. “Who I’d go to and provide sexual services to — Nekozyrev told me. Also, Saprykina had told me about Deripaska. From her, I found out she also provided him with sexual services for money. I found all the information about Deripaska on the internet and knew who I was going to.”
On the video interrogation, Popova says that at the last moment she got scared: “I became very anxious, I realized I was doing something wrong, doing it behind my parents’ backs, and maybe this is something bad, so I said I didn’t want to go anywhere, I wanted to go home.” But Saprykina drove her to the airport by taxi. Popova flew to Moscow alone.
The scouts — Anastasia Yakusheva and Alexandra — upon meeting, explained to the schoolgirl that she had to go to the hospital to “check for virginity” and sexually transmitted diseases.
At the hospital, Liza was examined; a vaginal swab and blood sample were taken. “I got scared. I suddenly realized that I was too far from home and not in control of the situation,” Popova recalled at the interrogation. According to her, if she disobeyed, the scouts “threatened her with problems,” said they would post her ‘walkthrough’ video on the “Rynok Shkur” Telegram channel.
“Even back in Izhevsk, Saprykina Irina warned me that if a man picked me, wanted to spend time with me and have sex, then I was supposed to go to him,” Popova explained in her testimony. “If I didn’t go to the man (for example, if I didn’t like him or just changed my mind), then I would have to pay them (Nekozyrev and Yakusheva) the sum they were supposed to earn — 300,000–500,000 rubles (about $4,500-$7,5000 — Ed.).”
Leaving the hospital, Popova says on the video interrogation, she wanted to go home, but couldn’t contact anyone. Yakusheva had already taken her mobile phone, explaining it as a security measure before the trip to Deripaska.
“He found out she wasn’t so innocent after all”
According to Elizaveta Popova’s testimony, she met with the oligarch on June 6, 2019, and provided him with paid sexual services in a country house with a pool and in a Moscow apartment with a private elevator and cinema. On June 7, Elizaveta Popova left for Krasnodar. She flew there with Yakusheva. Nekozyrev arrived separately and stayed at the same hotel. The criminal case documents include airline tickets: the data matches information from a reservation system data leak.
The girls went for a massage, and on the evening of June 10, according to Popova, she was taken by taxi out of the city, then transferred to a black SUV that brought her to the estate.
“There are many white buildings and a lot of staff in white. There was also a hippodrome, I rode horses there,” the schoolgirl recalled that trip to Krasnodar Krai.
At the estate, her phone was confiscated again. In her testimony, Popova stated that in this house, Oleg Deripaska had sex with her again. In return, the girl received another 150,000 rubles (about $2,300— Ed.), a diamond pendant, an Apple computer, and an Apple Watch.
Yakusheva took the jewelry. “There was a big diamond there, and she thought my parents might suspect something if they saw the pendant. I don’t remember the brand exactly, but the company’s name sounded like a planet,” Popova recalled, likely referring to the jewelry brand Mercury. Liza sold the watch, but kept the MacBook and later showed it off to her friend. However, security forces seized it anyway.
Popova’s VK page features a photo with the watch, dated July 24, 2019. In August, an Avito (online resale platform in Russia) ad appeared from an account linked to Popova’s primary phone number: “Apple Watch 4, gray, with white strap, 27,000 rub (about $400). Worn for a week, basically new. Check the profile, there are more brand items.”
According to Nekozyrev’s interrogations, that same summer, the schoolgirl met a new client. “After that, contact with Deripaska ended because he found out she was seeing others, not such a saint after all. That’s all I can say about this case,” Nekozyrev explained to investigators.
Popova spoke about her meetings with Deripaska not only at Investigative Committee interrogations but also earlier, to friends, conversations with whom were wiretapped and entered into the case.
Svetlana Titova confirmed in an interview with journalists that Deripaska had at least met with Popova: “As far as I know, they went for a swim in the pool. He told her, ‘I like you, come back when you’re a bit older.’ Gave her a tablet. Then Nekozyrev called me to say there was some problem with Deripaska’s managers, they wouldn’t hand over the envelope with the money. So I called my contacts. They handed over the money right away.” Asked why money was given if there was no sex, Titova replied, “You always pay for organizing these kinds of introductions.” She did not receive any money for this meeting, Titova said.
“He takes little girls basically on the principle of ‘so they won’t harm’”
“They were specifically looking for us. I was found at age 15. They wrote to me on VK under some fake photo,” recalls Alena Yaroshenko, another underage girl from the case files. She is now 23. In 2021, she was summoned for questioning in the case against Titova and Nekozyrev, but she refused to testify. Four years later, Alena agreed to speak to journalists.
“They told me the client was Deripaska and asked if I wanted to sell my virginity. Apparently, I had the kind of face Oleg was willing to pay for.
Two years later, at 17, Alena herself pursued Deripaska’s managers, “the ones who handle his introductions to girls,” and asked for a meeting. According to Alena, while still a minor, she met with Deripaska, and he paid her for sex.
“I was 17. There were 35 years between us… But at the time, I saw the situation as if there was some great love between us. He maintained that illusion, too.”
According to the girl, Deripaska “tries to protect himself as much as possible, to make sure no one knows his name when a girl visits.” “But this system doesn’t work, because he has so many assistants,” Alena explains.
She is sure that both Deripaska and his assistants “absolutely know how old we are.” According to her, managers check the girls’ documents, and the oligarch himself knows “because he routinely enrolls the girls in university.” Mostly, says Alena, he encourages schoolgirls to enroll in law faculties, discussing the profession of judges.
“I discussed the girls’ [ages] with him. Because I had already realized that there were so many young girls. He told me that he’s not a pedophile, that there was some unpleasant situation with some mature woman who had done something very bad to him, and that he takes little girls, of age or almost of age — basically so they won’t harm him. Like, they usually don’t understand the context, and even if they wanted to harm, they really can’t,” Alena explained.
A few years later, the girl realized that this relationship was not “great love” after all. Alena left Russia and is no longer involved in sex work.
“I’m just in shock, raising a prostitute out of my daughter”
Working for Titova and Nekozyrev, Popova herself persuaded several friends to start providing sex services. Pimps pushed her to recruit, promising 30–40,000 rubles (about $450-$600— Ed.) for each “top, good girl”, according to case materials.
There is a wiretap of her conversation in November 2019 with 16-year-old Ekaterina Ivanova:
— “You can refuse to do some things. You can say, ‘Well, I don’t want to,’ ‘No,’ ‘I can’t.’ … In general, the only thing discussed in advance is protection or no protection.”
— “Then, of course, protection”, says Ekaterina.
— “No, you’ll have to do it without protection.”
— “No, but what if he has something, like chlamydia?”
— “Are you insane? These are such rich people, they can’t possibly have any diseases. They’re more afraid of you. Or why do you think it costs so much? Because they’re all healthy, and you can be sure of that. That’s why they’re so expensive. Because they get off on popping cherries.”
Ivanova decided “to start right after New Year’, as we agreed”: “Later I’ll just tell my mom I’m going to Liza’s.” Popova briefed her on the price: she’d get 80,000 rubles (about $1,200 — Ed.) for “the first time,” then 60,000 rubles (about $900 — Ed.) for each next client.
“Yes, I know all her clients. First names, last names, locations. The clients knew perfectly well that Liza was a minor. It wasn’t a requirement, more of a whim. Liza’s activities were secret; only I and some, let’s say colleagues were aware. I think her mother suspected, but that’s just my assumption,” Ekaterina Ivanova told journalists.
At interrogations, the parents of Popova, as well as the parents of other girls, said they knew nothing about their daughters’ activities, and explained the money as modeling fees.
Pimps, however, were convinced otherwise. This is a quote from the phone conversation between Anastasia Yakusheva, the pimp, and her mother: “She [Popova] told her mother that she just sends girls, like us … Well, I guess mom, everyone knows everything. Everyone’s fine with it. Or maybe the mother will blackmail us now… And she’d be right because of the girl’s age… What a family, I’m in shock. Raising a prostitute out of a daughter,” said Yakusheva, who made money luring girls into prostitution.
The parents of Popova and Saprykina ignored journalists’ questions.
“It’s only recently that I’ve come to terms with the fact that this is how it will be”
All autumn 2019, the schoolgirls Liza and Katya made business plans: with the money earned from drawing other girls into prostitution, they planned to open a nail salon and a lingerie boutique. “We’ll make it in life! I’ve just got this light in my head,” Liza dreamed.
Popova reasoned that “if it weren’t for school, she could travel the world” and “make a million or even three million in a month.” And Katya could “make a million in three months and help her parents pay off loans,” Liza added.
Katya Ivanova replied that she wanted “to have” a lot of money and didn’t care how to get it. She explained that her family spends 50,000 rubles (about $750 ) a month on loans, and that their groceries are already bought with money set aside for debts. “If we didn’t have loans, we’d be super rich,” she believed.
Katya’s mother, according to the schoolgirl, had recently been earning money laundering, but stopped “because it’s a criminal offense.” “And officials can steal as much as they want and never get punished thanks to their connections,” Popova took exception. Further in the transcript of their conversation, the officer switched to indirect speech and wrote that “the interlocutors discussed the negative aspects of the state’s financial and social policy, low pension amounts, and lack of support for small businesses.”
— “Well, at least you don’t get punished for illegal… Though I can’t call this prostitution. Actually, no, it is prostitution,” Ivanova said.
— “No, I don’t think I am what you said,” Popova disagreed.
— “I don’t think being a prostitute is bad. Yes, it’s neither bad nor good.”
— “It’s just a person’s choice, that’s all,” Popova clarified.
— “Yes. I’m not going to do this for my whole life.”
— “You’ve got your head on straight.”
— “I’m nervous myself”, Ivanova admitted. “It used to give me nightmares, it was hard for me. I’d wake up just crying like a bitch. I thought, well, this is my only option, what will I do when my beauty fades? I worried about all that. Only recently have I come to terms with the fact that this is how it will be.”
But Ivanova didn’t end up selling her virginity.
“BILLIONAIRES”
“OD”
According to the interrogations of the case defendants, Oleg Deripaska did not ask to see Elizaveta Popova’s passport during their first meeting, and she, judging by her statements, did not tell him her age directly.
According to Maksim Nekozyrev’s testimony, ninth-grader Elizaveta Popova was being prepared to be the billionaire’s “kept woman,” on condition that half her monthly income would go to the pimps. Svetlana Titova indirectly confirmed the same in an interview with journalists. The plan collapsed, Nekozyrev said, when Popova went to another client: “Oleg Deripaska, for whom she [Popova] was initially intended, would have supported her. But since she started seeing too many others, he found out and didn’t want to continue.”
In the case files, Oleg Deripaska’s name is repeatedly mentioned in both testimonies and in wiretaps of conversations among pimps and girls. One of Elizaveta Popova’s interrogations, in which she discusses meetings with the oligarch, was recorded on video. In addition, Irina Saprykina directly names Deripaska in her request for a pretrial agreement sent on July 23, 2020, to Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov. There, Saprykina undertakes “to provide all information known to her about individuals who have used sexual services of minors,” including “Deripaska O.”
Speaking of places where she met the businessman, Popova described Deripaska’s Krasnodar Krai estate to investigators as “a large number of white buildings,” with a hippodrome nearby. This is likely the oligarch’s estate at Sokolsky, 70 km from Krasnodar.
In Moscow, as Popova told investigators, she was taken to a five-story apartment with an elevator in “an old building with an arch.” This probably refers to a building on Volkhonka Street, in the center of Moscow. On the facade at the second-floor level is a white arch, with a fence around it. The owner is InvestPlus, which, through a chain of companies, belonged to Valentina Deripaska — the billionaire’s mother.
We tried to contact Oleg Deripaska through his assistant, but she did not respond to journalists’ messages. We also sent questions addressed to Oleg Deripaska to Rusal’s press office, but had not received a reply.
“The Match King”
In the summer of 2019, Svetlana Titova’s scouts continued to advertise the Izhevsk schoolgirl Liza Popova as a “null” and offer her to new clients.
One of them, the pimps called “the match king,” was Alexander Usov, former owner of one of the largest road contractors for the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, a business partner of the family of former defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and former co-owner of the woodworking company Soyuz. He pursued sex workers through his acquaintances and Titova’s assistants, paid 150,000 rubles (about $2,300 — Ed.) for young girls, 300,000 (about $4,600).
Popova and Goncharova said at interrogations that they wanted to pass Popova off to Usov as an adult woman. For this, her passport was photoshopped to show “born in 2000.” At the same time, Goncharova gave Liza a syringe with red dye and a vaginal-tightening agent.
At that meeting on the evening of November 1, 2019, Popova was nervous from the outset and complained to Goncharova in texts about pain and burning “inside”:
— “It stings. Is that normal? I’m dizzy, I’m going to faint. Feels like salt on a wound. Oh God. I’m scared. It hurts so bad. It’s just awful. What should I do,” she wrote to Goncharova, who had her listed in her phone as “Liza 51.”
— “Don’t worry, it just gets tight down there. Hang in there, honey. We’ll clean you up at home,” Goncharova replied.
When Usov arrived at the apartment, according to the schoolgirl, he “asked her 1,000 times if she was a virgin, how old she was, and asked to see her passport.” After sex without a condom and oral, he left.
Liza went to see the ‘match king’ again at the end of November 2019. That month, her chats with the pimps about the price of anal sex alternated with texts from her father reminding her that she had school in the morning.
Having agreed through Yakusheva on 150,000 rubles for herself and 100,000 for the scouts (about $2,300 and $1,500— Ed.), Popova flew to St. Petersburg. Before the meeting, she went to a sex shop with a list of goods from the pimps. There she was caught on security cameras. “What exactly did you buy in the store?” the investigator asked during the interrogation, but Liza was unable to answer through her tears, and the interrogation was interrupted.
On November 29, Usov took her to the Druzhnoe hunting lodge belonging to his brother. On the way there, Liza told Usov she was studying to be a designer, had moved to her second year, wanted to transfer universities, and emphasized that she was over 18. That same evening, according to the case, five more people — Usov’s friends and acquaintances — checked in at the lodge.
During the night, police arrived. Popova was led out of room No. 1. All items in the room, including an enema, lubricant, condoms, sheets, and blood stains, became evidence. In the girl’s bag, police found: an anal plug, a candy wrapper, a negative pregnancy test, a student transport card, lubricant, painkillers, a copy of a passport with an altered birth date, and a bookmark for the textbook “Russian Language. Grade 9.”
During interrogations, Usov invoked Article 51 of the Constitution of Russia, which guarantees that no one shall be obliged to give evidence incriminating themselves. He denied intercourse and insisted Liza looked older than her age and had told him several times that she was over 18.
— “Tell me, in phone conversations with Titova S., Nekozyrev M.V., and Yakusheva A.V., did you use the codes ‘51’, ‘61’ to indicate the age of the girls ordered for sexual services — 15, 16 years old?” the investigator asked.
— “I invoke Article 51 of the Russian Constitution and will not answer that question.”
An expert analysis in the case confirmed sexual contact between Popova and Usov by DNA of sperm and blood. Before facing charges, Usov left Russia. On May 17, 2021, the Basmanny Court of Moscow arrested him in absentia on charges of “sexual intercourse with a person under 16.” On May 31, he was placed on an international wanted list. In 2022, Austrian authorities refused to extradite him to Russia.
As of publication, Alexander Usov has not responded to journalists’ requests.
“Case closed”
Even though Russian law defines criminal liability for purchasing sexual services from minors (Article 240.1), out of dozens of clients of the girls mentioned in the case, only Usov was prosecuted under this article. Oleg Deripaska’s name is not in the indictment.
One of the investigators who worked on the case gave journalists this response: “Information about the clients was provided by the operatives. Our superiors, on the orders of the prosecutors, told us not to meddle. All the boys and girls are adults; they get the hints.”
In the end, only the pimps went to prison.
On June 30, 2022, Maksim Nekozyrev was sentenced to a total of six years in a penal colony for organizing prostitution with minors (Part 2, Article 241 of the Russian Criminal Code), involving minors in prostitution (Part 3, Article 240), and involving a minor in committing a crime (Part 4, Article 150). According to Nekozyrev’s social media, from the prison he joined the Wagner Group and went to fight in Ukraine, where he added a concussion to his previous wounds from the Chechen wars. For this, he got the Medal for Bravery and a pardon. In summer 2023, he returned home to Astrakhan, bought a new Mercedes, and found a girlfriend. Nekozyrev refused to be interviewed, telling journalists to “fuck off.”
On March 3, 2024, a court sentenced Anastasia Yakusheva to six years in a penal colony. After the arrest of the scouts at the end of 2019, she hid for a while but later turned herself in to the police.
Olga Goncharova was sentenced to five years and six months’ imprisonment. She currently lives in a prison colony settlement. Through relatives, Goncharova conveyed that she would not speak to the media.
Alexandra Shantyreva is still on the wanted list.
Svetlana Titova left Russia and succeeded in avoiding extradition from Austria, where Russian investigators sent a request in 2022. In 2024, the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced her in absentia to seven years’ imprisonment. She learned of this from journalists: “I’m not involved in these cases! What did they even write there? I read it and didn’t understand what it was about,” Titova explained. “And I never organized any prostitution, I helped girls from poor families — paid for gym memberships for some, bought dresses for others, got some jobs. And I introduced them to wealthy men, if they asked. Believe me, they all ask themselves.
Acquaintanceship is not prostitution; it’s just acquaintanceship for a relationship. Where else can people of that level meet? He can’t just approach a girl on the street. And the money is paid anyway. Even if a girl just went to dinner in a restaurant with him, even if all she did was go to the theatre — it doesn’t matter if something went further or not, there’s always a sum. He gives something to the girl, and a share goes to the managers.
Mostly, I did this for friendship. In return, he might someday do you a favor. Different things. Not necessarily always material. Money doesn’t impress people like them; they’re interested in other things. Connections, help, relationships — that’s where the gratitude is,” Titova said.
Irina Saprykina was arrested in December 2019, when she was already 18. She was charged with organizing prostitution (sub-paragraph ‘v’, part 2, Article 241 of the Russian Criminal Code, charges up to sex years in prison) and involving minors in this activity (part 3, Article 240, charges up to eight years in prison). What punishment Irina Saprykina received (or whether she did) is unknown: there is no verdict on the court’s website. But in 2025, she wrote on social media that she was studying at a medical faculty.
“The Investigative Committee is aware of your actions — that you are harassing people involved in the criminal case, who do not intend to speak with you. The case is closed, if that is not clear. The case is c-l-o-s-e-d to intruders like you. Thank you for bothering. All the best,” Irina Saprykina replied to journalists when we asked her to speak about the case.