Amid the controversy regarding former President Donald Trump‘s residence at Mar-A-Lago and his alleged possession of classified documents, another investigation has turned up a mysterious imposter in a story that could easily make for another season of Netflix’s true crime docudrama Inventing Anna.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has revealed that a Ukrainian immigrant whose real name is Inna Yashchyshyn posed as an heiress under the name of Anna de Rothschild and claimed to be a scion of the famous European banking family of the same name. Posing as Rothschild, Yashchyshyn made several trips to Trump’s resort and residence, mingling with his supporters and politician, including South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham.
Yashchyshyn’s pose, replete with haute couture, a Rolex watch, and a $170 thousand black Mercedes-Benz AMG G63, may well have come straight out of the playbook of Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey who bilked credulous members of New York City’s upper crust out of thousands of dollars.
The ability of Yashchyshyn to penetrate the security of Mar-a-Lago, especially at a time when top secret and classified documents were alleged to be on premises, is a glaring breach of not only the former President’s security but perhaps even of national security itself. “That’s his residence,” said Ed Martin, a former U.S. Treasury special agent, told the Post-Gazette. “She shouldn’t have been in there.”
“That’s all fake, and nothing happened,” she said, according to the Post-Gazette.
Yashchyshyn is currently under investigation by the FBI, and several documents have been turned over to the agency regarding her presence at Mar-a-Lago so far, including two forged Canadian and U.S. passports as well as a Florida driver’s license for “Anna de Rothschild” that lists her residence as a mansion in Miami Beach that she never lived in under any name. She denies ever having used the name or the documents.
According to John LeFevre, a former investment banker and guest at Mar-a-Lago at one of the times Yashchyshyn was present, she identified herself several times as a Rothschild. “Everyone was eating it up,” he told the Post-Gazette “It was the near-perfect ruse and she played the part.”
So far, nothing regarding Yashchyshyn’s motivations for visiting the resort or impersonating a member of the 1 percent are known, but it has been revealed that she has been under investigation by a major crimes unit investigation in Quebec since February. According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Yashchyshyn is the former director of United Hearts of Mercy, a Miami-based charity that was kicked off payment processing platform Stripe after it was revealed that the organization had been using stolen credit cards to make donations to the charity.
According to Lefevre, he met Yashchyshyn, then posing as De Rothschild, at Mar-a-Lago on May 1, 2021. “She talked about vineyards and family estates and growing up in Monaco,” he said, according to OCCRP. The next day she was schmoozing with Senator Graham as well as many other politicoes who regularly visit the former President’s residence at the Trump International Golf Club. She posed for several pictures with Trump and Graham.
More light has been shed on the matter by Yashchyshyn’s current legal disputes with her former business partner, 44-year-old Valeriy Tarasenko. According to Tarasenko, Yashchyshyn is a grifter who took advantage of him for money. He also has claimed she abused one of his children – an accusation that Yashchyshyn denies. Conversely, she has accused Tarasenko of physically abusing her.
According to the Post-Gazette, Tarasenko has met twice with the FBI to discuss Yashchyshyn’s presence at Mar-a-Lago and has said that Yashchyshyn used “her fake identity as Anna de Rothschild to gain access to and build relationships with U.S. politician[s], including but not limited to Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and [ disgraced former Missouri governor] Eric Greitens.”
Yashchyshyn’s deceit remained undetected until this March when Dean Lawrence, a Florida music creative director, was attending an event at Mar-a-Lago when the conversation turned to Anna de Rothschild. Lawrence had been involved in a music company — Rothschild Media Label, where Yashchyshyn was the president and recognized the description. He warned those in attendance, “I want to clear something up with you. I want you to know that she has nothing to do with the Rothschilds. Don’t get involved in any kind of business with her,” according to the Post-Gazette.
Lawrence later told the Post-Gazette he was concerned that it was he and not a member of the security staff that revealed Yashchyshyn’s true identity. “What I’m trying to understand is how did they allow this?” said Mr. Lawrence. “How could someone keep coming back — at that level? This is Mar-a-Lago.”
Published: Aug 26, 2022 04:56 pm