The South Beach club operator who orchestrated the “bar girls” scheme that fleeced former Philadelphia weatherman John Bolaris out of $43,000 and eventually cost him his job was sentenced to 12 years in prison today.
According the Miami Herald, operator Albert Takhalov cried as he was sentenced.
Also sentenced today were Isaac Feldman, an investor in two of the clubs implicated in the “bar girls” ring, who received eight years, and Stanislav Pavlenko, will be sentenced later this month
NORRISTOWN — A Pottstown man has admitted to strangling his girlfriend to death during a violent argument before hiding her body in the basement of her home and fleeing to Florida in the woman’s car.
Edwin Carrero II, 33, pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court on Thursday to charges of third-degree murder, theft by unlawful taking and access device fraud in connection with the Feb. 2, 2012, strangulation death of 31-year-old Alicia Schmidt inside Schmidt’s 424 Cherry St. residence, where Carrero periodically resided.
“He strangled a defenseless woman in her bedroom with her children asleep in the house. It doesn’t get any worse than this. This is a murder case,” said Assistant District Attorney Wallis Brooks, who leads the district attorney’s domestic violence prosecution unit.
President Judge William J. Furber Jr. deferred sentencing so that court officials can complete a background investigative report about Carrero, who faces a possible maximum prison term of 30½ to 61 years. Carrero, who also listed an address along Norris Hall Lane in West Norriton, bowed his head and did not respond to a reporter’s questions as sheriff’s deputies escorted him from the courtroom for the return to jail, where he remains pending sentencing.
A 22-year-old man will be tried for binding, beating and torturing three elderly Mennonite sisters last year in what police called a case of “ethnic intimidation.”
Dereck Taylor Holt and his attorney, Alan Goldberg, waived a preliminary hearing Tuesday morning on numerous offenses, including felony aggravated assault, robbery, unlawful restraint and reckless endangerment.
In turn, District Judge Tony Russell ordered Holt to be tried on 23 charges related to the Dec. 14 incident in Clay Township.
Holt, locked up on $1 million bail since his arrest Dec. 16, appeared in the Ephrata courtroom only to sign paperwork. He said nothing.
