A globe-trotting genealogist has made a cottage industry out of searching Eastern Europe for the long-lost relatives of people who died without wills in New York City and in other parts of the United States.
Vadim Tevelev says he has worked on more than 100 Surrogate’s Court cases in which he has located an heir and then helped the relative score a piece of the decedent’s estate.
Now he’s working on behalf of a Russian-born New Jersey woman to win her part of an $8 million fortune left behind by Isaac Kramer, a Crown Heights, Brooklyn, lawyer who died in 2008 at the age of 94.
But several estate lawyers and genealogy experts have said that the family trees and genealogical records that Tevelev submits as proof of kinship are not always rooted in reality.
A court-appointed lawyer who is reviewing the Kramer case recently said that the Ukrainian birth records Tevelev submitted were likely forgeries.
The lawyer, Roger Olson, wrote in his March 20 report for a Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court judge that Tevelev has been involved in other cases where genealogical records were called into question.
One of the cases, Olson wrote, was the estate of Halina Czechowska, an East Village seamstress whom the Daily News profiled on Sunday.
Tevelev, 54, currently represents Elizabeth Hovav, who he says is Kramer’s first cousin once removed and entitled to some of the dead man’s fortune.
Like in other estate cases, he holds power of attorney for Hovav and her interest in the estate. If he successfully proves kinship, he would get a commission based on the size of her inheritance.
However, Hovav and 36 other alleged relatives of Kramer — the son of Belarusian immigrants — have been locked in an epic legal battle over the estate for nearly nine years.
Lawyers for the other relatives in the case have also questioned the documents Tevelev has submitted over the years. But Olson’s concerns are the most recent.
In his filing, Olson said he obtained a 2013 report by the public prosecutor’s office in Lviv, Ukraine, which said a civil servant had pleaded guilty to forging records that showed Hovav’s mother was born in Lviv and to falsifying the identities of Hovav’s grandparents.
In reality, Hovav’s mom was from St. Petersburg, Russia, according to the prosecutor’s report.
The public prosecutor’s report also says that the forgeries were made for unidentified people to use to obtain money from Kramer’s estate.
Tevelev had also submitted records from the central archive of Russia’s federal security service stating that Hovav’s grandparents had been arrested in 1947 and were executed.
However, Olson said in his report that he obtained a letter from the federal security service stating it had no records of Hovav’s grandparents and had never provided a document stating as such.
“Substantial documentary evidence supports a finding that Elizabeth Hovav’s claim of kinship is based upon forgery and fraud,” Olson wrote in his report.
Tevelev declined to comment for this story.
However, Tevelev’s lawyer, Stephen Barbaro, filed a response to Olson’s report on April 28, saying that the genealogical records were real.
Barbaro instead questioned the authenticity of the Lviv prosecutor’s report, calling it “highly suspect.”
He also said that Ukraine’s National Police Department later conducted its own investigation into the civil servant’s alleged forgery in 2016 and decided that no crime had occurred. However, the police also said that evidence in the case had been lost due to the riots in Ukraine in 2014.
Tevelev, who lives in Edgewater, N.J., and was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, has said he has been an heir hunter since 1991 when he opened a firm called East Market.
During a 2009 deposition in a separate estate proceeding, he said he considered himself a specialist in foreign documents and locating people overseas.
“Most of my job, I’m going through all local archives, including all Eastern European countries, some Western European countries, Middle East, Israel,” he said.
“I try to find all documentary proof of people who live outside the United States who are somehow related with people who died in the United States.”
In exchange for his services, Tevelev takes a third of whatever inheritance his client collects. He said in his deposition that in one case in Chicago he helped a relative obtain a $500,000 inheritance.
He wasn’t as lucky in the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court case involving the estate of Halina Czechowska, who died with about $280,000 and no apparent heirs. Tevelev represented an alleged niece, who after presenting genealogical records was set to receive Czechowska’s money in 2011.
But before the cash was dispensed, a New York estate lawyer, Glenn Levin, swooped in with compelling evidence of Czechowska’s true heirs. Levin also filed documents alleging that some of the genealogical records that Tevelev had submitted were fake.
A judge eventually ruled in favor of Levin’s clients.
Olson cited the Czechowska estate and two Chicago-based cases as reasons to be suspicious of the genealogical records submitted in the Kramer case.
One of the other cases involves the estate of Wanda Gawel, in which Tevelev said he found two of the decedent’s alleged heirs. In the case, an expert genealogy witness testified that certain Ukrainian marriage documents submitted on behalf of the two alleged heirs were bogus.
After the testimony, the attorneys for Tevelev and his alleged heirs asked to be relieved as counsel, noting that continued representation could lead to ethical violations.
Despite Olson’s report, Tevelev and Hovav may still get a payday in the Kramer case. The lawyers for 35 of the alleged relatives in the case have submitted filings asking a judge to let all the parties reach a settlement — despite the forgery accusations.
The lawyers said that the case has dragged for too long, racking up costly legal fees and other expenses. If a judge lets the settlement talks move forward, one proposed deal would give Hovav $300,000, court filings show.