A woman was handed a 21-year prison sentence after she tried to kill a New York beautician with a cheesecake laced with poison.
Viktoria Nasyrova, 47, was found guilty in February of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree attempted assault after she attacked friend Olga Tsvyk.
The Queens County District Attorney said Nasyrova tried to murder Tsvyk with the poison-laced dessert in an attempt to steal her identity.
Evidence used in the case showed the New York resident visited her intended victim at home and offered her a piece of cheesecake she had brought with her.
The cake was laced with a highly potent sedative that quickly had Tsvyk feeling sick and causing her to faint.
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After the sentence was confirmed, Tsvyk said: “God gave me life when Viktoria Nasyrova tried to end my life. For her, it was an easy thing to try and take the life of another person.
“It was an easy thing to gain the trust of another person and then take everything from that person… it was easy for her to steal. It was easy for her to kill.”
The prosecutors claimed Nasyrova had intended to murder the beautician, who shared the same “dark hair, the same complexion and other similar physical traits,” to steal her identity.
The DA’s office said Tsvyk’s “last memory was of seeing Nasyrova walking around her room,” before she lost consciousness.
The woman was found the following morning in bed surrounded by pills “as if she had attempted to kill herself” and was immediately taken to the hospital.
The DA said federal law enforcement agents found both the pills and the cheesecake leftover contained the sedative Phenazepam, a powerful benzodiazepine routinely used to treat anxiety, epilepsy and sleeping disorders in Russia.
Queens County District Attorney Melinda Katz said at the time of conviction: “Nasyrova laced a slice of cheesecake with a deadly drug so she could steal her unsuspecting victim’s most valuable possession, her identity. Fortunately, her victim survived and the poison led right back to the culprit.”
When she returned home from the hospital, Tsvyk found her passport, work permit and £2,412 ($3,000) were missing.
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Nasyrova’s attorney, Jose Nieves, filed an appeal to challenge the length of the sentence, telling CNN that 21 years is “excessive and inappropriate given Ms Nasryrova’s, life circumstances, her mental illness history, family support, and her traumatic experiences while living in the United States.”
He said the appeal will “focus on legal procedural errors and evidentiary issues that occurred during her trial.”
While Phenazepam is prescribed in Russia, the drug “does not currently have an accepted medical use in the United States.
According to the Department of Justice, the drug is often illegally traded for recreational use in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
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