A Brooklyn gangster who busted out of the city’s floating jail with the help of an Eastern European crime syndicate was sentenced to 21 months in prison on a federal charge related to the escape, authorities said.
David Mordukhaev pleaded guilty Thursday to a violation of federal supervised release and was slapped with the nearly two-year sentence in Brooklyn federal court, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office said.
Mordukhaev was on supervised release after pleading guilty in 2013 to conspiring to distribute oxycodone in New Jersey, according to court papers.
Mordukhaev may also face additional state charges for the escape from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, which is investigating the incident, a spokesperson for the office said.
Mordukhaev, 30, sparked a five-borough manhunt after he busted out of a window in his fifth-floor cell at the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Facility and shimmied down a rope he had knotted to his bed frame on July 10, sources told The Post at the time.
The brazen escapee allegedly taunted guards at the facility, leaving a note on the wall that read, “special search just searched my cell and they didn’t check the window,” a source told The Post.
He then swam to shore after dropping into the East River from the floating jail barge.
Once he reached land, Mordukhaev allegedly began communicating with cohort Roman “Roma” Nikoghosyan, a reputed leader in the “KavKaz Nation” gang, federal prosecutors alleged.
The feds caught Mordukhaev on wiretaps discussing the escape with Nikoghosyan directly after he had made the daring dash to freedom, according to a detention memo filed by federal prosecutors.
“[T]hey won’t even know I am gone for another week probably,” Mordukhaev said, adding that he “almost died today,” according to the feds.
Nikoghosyan then tried to arrange for the escapee to pick up cash from his mother’s apartment in Brighton Beach and a car to drive to California but was busted by the FBI before he made it out of Brooklyn.
Nikoghosyan was arrested last month in California on extortion charges. Prosecutors alleged he was a leader of the KavKaz crew, a crime syndicate based in southern Brooklyn that carries out home-invasion robberies, extortion and cocaine trafficking.
Mordukhaev was awaiting trial for armed robbery when he busted out of the Rikers Island barge. He allegedly held up two men in Brooklyn while impersonating a police officer in August 2020, according to charging documents.
His attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.