According to the United States Department of Justice, a 33-count indictment was unsealed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The indictment charges six defendants, who allegedly have ties to an Eastern European organized crime syndicate, with racketeering predicate acts. One of those alleged crimes involved arson that took place in May 2016.

The Arson Charge
Four of the defendants, Viktor Zelinger, Vyacheslav Malkeyev, Leonid Gershman, and Aleksey Tsvetkov, are charged with crimes related to arson of a residential building at 2220 Voorhies Avenue in Brooklyn that took place shortly after 1:00 a.m. on May 2, 2016.

The impetus for the crime? It is alleged that the defendants operated an illegal high-stakes poker game on Coney Island Avenue and that they conspired to set fire to the Voorhies building because it was the location of a rival poker game.

While the rival game was allegedly on the ground floor of the residential building, the entire building went up in flames, and two residents were trapped in a third-floor apartment as a result.
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2017/...klyn-28900.htm