Each count carries a maximum 20-year jail sentence. The US Attorney’s Southern District Office of New York charged Mr Tsvetnenko with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, one count of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, in 2016.īut extradition arrest warrant proceedings against him didn’t begin until recently.
Mr Tsvetnenko faced a bail application hearing at Perth Magistrates Court last week. He was remanded in custody at Hakea prison, where he remains. Mr Tsvetnenko appeared in Perth Magistrates Court the same day as his arrest, represented by lawyer Rishi Kashyap from Equus Chambers. He said he put his success down to hard work. Such was his wealth that in 2009 he told The West Australian:“I’ve made so much money so quick that I haven’t had time to count it. The entrepreneur arrived to his favourite song, Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer. Mr Tsvetnenko’s 2010 surprise 30th birthday bash featured ice sculptures of his Lamborghini and Ferrari, and a birthday cake emblazoned with his face on a $US100 bill. US rapper Flo Rida flew in for their Grecian-themed fundraiser Party like the Gods, held on the observation deck at Fraser’s Restaurant in Kings Park in 2010, complete with Greek warriors, mermaids, live statues, Zeus and Medusa. The entrepreneur threw his wife a $250,000 Las Vegas-themed 30th birthday party at North Fremantle’s upmarket Salt Restaurant at Port Beach in 2009. Mr Tsvetnenko flew his wife to Hollywood for her 29th birthday and US rapper Snoop Dogg performed for her.
And their lavish parties are the stuff of legend. Their $600,000 wedding in 2008 was a real-life fairytale, complete with a horse-drawn carriage. She was Lydia Gaugg when they met at Paramount nightclub in 2002. He and his wife Lydia, who drove his-and-hers Lamborghinis, were the “Posh and Becks” of the Perth social scene and threw money around like confetti.
Camera Icon Zhenya and then-wife Lydia at home in 2014. Mr Tsvetnenko’s fortune soared thanks to his Australian premium SMS business, which delivered alerts about the weather, cheap petrol, horoscopes and IQ tests. In less than two years he was turning over more than $4 million a month. In 2005, he launched an SMS Gateway service from his bedroom in Canning Vale, while living on two-minute noodles and his wife’s wage. His big break came when he worked nights devising a computer program capable of delivering SMS messages automatically. Mr Tsvetnenko’s meteoric rise saw him go from university drop-out, with only $200 in his bank account, to WA’s richest young man in only three years. His parents, biochemists Yuri and Elena Tsvetnenko, found jobs at Curtin University. He migrated from Russia to Australia with his parents in 1992, aged 12. Mr Tsvetnenko’s rise reads like a Hollywood film script. He had double the wealth of Hollywood stars on the list such as Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett.
He debuted on the BRW Young Rich List in 2009, aged 29, with a fortune of $107 million and in the top 10 of Australia’s richest people under 40. His circumstances are in stark contrast to his former rock-star life. “I am not guilty of the alleged offences.” “In July 2016, I learnt I had been accused of and charged with committing criminal offences in 20, in the United States of America,” he told The Sunday Times from behind bars,via his media representative Evelyn Duffy, yesterday. Mr Tsvetnenko is denying the allegations. The police were acting on an extradition arrest warrant relating to Mr Tsvetnenko’s alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar text-messaging scam, which fleeced more than $196 million from mobile phone customers across the US. The Sunday Times can reveal the 39-year-old was arrested by the Australian Federal Police at his luxurious river front apartment in the Raffles complex in Applecross, in the early hours of December 20, 2018 Mr Tsvetnenko has spent 39 days in Hakea, including Christmas and New Year’s Eve. And he’s staring down the barrel of a maximum 60-year prison sentence, if extradited and convicted, for allegedly taking part in one of the biggest telecommunications scams in US legal history.
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