THE FBI is probing startling claims that an alleged Ukrainian master con-woman posed as a member of a rich European banking dynasty to gain repeated access to the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organised Crime Corruption and Reporting Project (OCCRP), fake heiress ‘Anna de Rothschild’ interacted with former President Trump, Senator Lindsay Graham, and former Governor of Missouri Eric Greitens.

Inna Yaschchynshyn with Donald Trump
Inna Yaschchynshyn with Donald Trump

Her real name, however, is the somewhat less glamorous Inna Yaschchynshyn, and she is the Russian-speaking daughter of a truck driver from Illinois. It is unclear when she came to the US.

  • fake passport
  • the fake mansion and driver licence

Federal records obtained by the Post-Gazette and the OCCRP showed she had two fake passports from the US and Canada in her name listed as “Anna de Rothschild.” A Florida driver’s licence under the alias and bearing her picture, listed a US$13 million Miami Beach mansion where she never lived.

Yaschchynshyn made several trips to the ex-president’s Florida estate with her fake identity to make connections with some of the most senior members of the Republican party. Mar-a-Lago has been the subject of a recent FBI raid in which 25 secret documents were recovered, which were marked top secret.

The Post-Gazette claimed she formerly worked in a suburban Miami-based business connecting pregnant Russian women to Americans looking to adopt a child; however, the web of lies unfolded amid a legal dispute she had with her former associate.

The Mar-a-lago estate
The Mar-a-lago estate

According to Valeriy (CORRECT) Tarasenko, a 44-year-old businessman raised in Moscow, Yaschchynshyn made multiple trips to Mar-a-Lago in an effort to make contacts and create new streams of business.

Photos from 2021 show the brunette hanging out with “Trump, Graham and other.

“It wasn’t just dropping the family name. She talked about vineyards and family estates and growing up in Monaco,” John LeFevre, a former investment banker and author, told OCCRP.

Yaschchynshyn used “her fake identity as Anna de Rothschild to gain access to and build relationships with US politician[s], including but not limited to Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and [former Missouri Gov.] Eric Greitens,” Tarasenko said, according to an affidavit obtained by the Post-Gazette.

Yashchyshyn denied under oath that she had ever used another name and had not broken any laws.

She spoke to the paper and said she had never heard of Anna de Rothschild, claiming Tarasenko had created the fake IDs to blacken her name.

“Over time, Tarasenko became more controlling and aggressive over me,” she said in an affidavit to a court in Miami.

Mr Tarashenko reportedly met with FBI agents twice and told them about her visits to Mar-a-Lago and her interactions with the ex-President and a number of other senior politicians.

Ms Yashchyshyn is also under investigation for alleged financial fraud, related to a Miami charity called United Hearts of Mercy, which used the same name as a charity in Canada founded by Mr Tarashenko.

She acted as president of the charity, but one of the group’s payment processors, Stripe Inc, suspected fraud and refused to take their money.

The charity stated it aimed to help families struggling during the pandemic.

The group’s accountant, Tatiana Verzilina, told the paper that near the end of their campaign she began receiving threatening phone calls from individuals “with accents” saying they would kill her and her family if she didn’t free up funds for their use.

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  • Dennis Rice

    National Security News (NSN) welcomes the appointment of Dennis Rice, former Chief Reporter of the Daily Express and Investigations Editor of the Mail on Sunday, as its Launch Editor. He brings with him three decades of experience covering national and international news, which has also included a stint working as a producer at Channel 4 Dispatches. Commenting on his new role, Dennis said: “NSN is a digital platform which exists purely to break stories and uncover new twists and exclusives around existing ones. Whether it’s reporting on the cloak and dagger world of espionage, cyber terrorism, subversion, or intelligence we are very much looking forward to giving the existing media a run for its money.” Dennis Rice is a veteran investigative journalist who has finished as a runner up in Journalist of the Year category at the British Press Awards. He also worked as Investigations Editor of the Mail on Sunday, Chief Reporter of the Daily Express, and as a senior journalist at the Sunday Mirror and the News of the World. His Dispatches credits include working as a producer on How To Stop Your Nuisance Calls (an expose on charity fundraisers) and Murder in the Sky: Flight MH17 (reporting on the crash of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over the eastern Ukraine). While at the Mail on Sunday he wrote a series of articles which resulted in the resignation of BP Chief Lord Browne, and earlier David Blunkett as the then Work and Pensions Secretary. In 2011 he was paid damages at the High Court after his former employer the News of the World admitted hacking his phone.