Viktoria Nasyrova, a woman who tried to kill her doppelganger beautician with a poisoned cheesecake, was found guilty on February 8th and faces up to 25 years in prison.

In August of 2016, Nasyrova brought a cheesecake laced with sedatives to Olga Tsvyk’s home in Forest Hills, New York. The skin beautification technician Tsvyk was strikingly similar in appearance to Nasyrova, and the two women are both Russian speakers. Nasyrova ate two pieces of untainted cheesecake before offering a poisoned slice to Tsvyk, causing her to vomit and lose consciousness. Nasyrova proceeded to change Tsvyk into lingerie and sprinkled Phenazepam pills on the floor to frame the scene as a suicide. Friends of Tsvyk found her unconscious the next day and she later recovered at the hospital. Once discharged, Tsvyk returned home to find that her Ukrainian passport, work authorization, and stashes of jewelry and cash were missing.

Luckily for the police, it didn’t take much effort to find the culprit. Nasyrova left plenty of DNA evidence on the cheesecake box, leading law enforcement right back to her tracks. This wasn’t Nasyrova’s first run in with law; just a year before, Nasyrova was accused of an eerily similar crime to her neighbor in Russia, Alla Alekseenko. She fatally drugged the women and stole her life savings, allegedly setting her body on fire before fleeing to New York City. In a separate case in 2019, Nasyrova also pleaded guilty to drugging and robbing men she coerced on dating websites. Despite the investigations of her most recent crime, Nasyrova has defended herself in the past, explaining to news sources that “The last time I saw Olga, she was already not feeling good — she said she either ate something or got food poisoning.”

On Wednesday, Nasyrova was found guilty after multiple years of battle in the court. The district attorney concluded that Nasyrova’s motive for the attempted murder was to steal Olga Tsvyk’s identity. Because the two women were doppelgangers with similar cultural backgrounds, Tsvyk was the perfect target for Nasyrova to impersonate. “She laced a slice of cheesecake with a deadly drug so she could steal her unsuspecting victim’s most valuable possession, her identity,” said Melinda Katz, a district attorney for Queens. “Fortunately, her victim survived and the poison led right back to the culprit.” Former dominatrix Viktoria Nasyrova, now 47, now faces up to 24 years in prison for charges such as assault, unlawful imprisonment, and attempted murder. Sentencing will be decided on March 21st.