The gangster has been doing his term, expiring today, in the Allenwood federal jail, Pennsylvania, the Federal Bureau of Prisons under the U.S. Department of Justice says on its official database.
A Russian police crew has departed to the U.S. by air to guard Ivankov en route, says our informant. The deportee is expected to come to Moscow by a U.S. Air Force cargo plane on maximum-security arrangements.
The FBI arrested the man in New York City, June 1995. He was indicted with extorting $3.5 million from Russian immigrants. As the defendant alleged, a friend had asked him to collect a debt.
A verdict of "guilty", January 1998, left Ivankov behind the bars for nine years and seven months, pre-trial detention included. Good conduct reduced his term.
The office of Russia's Prosecutor General applied to the U.S. for his extradition in June. The request was granted.
"Ivankov is to be put on an American plane even today to land in Moscow tomorrow afternoon, with Russian law enforcers waiting," the Novoye Russkoye Slovo (New Russian Word), a New York-based Russian-language newspaper, says in today's issue.
"If the expectations don't come true, things will take a routine American turn-Ivankov will promptly land in an immigrant jail, where he will wait to be deported," assumes the daily.
"No. 30219048 is to be released, July 13," Allenwood authorities confirmed for Novosti.
Ivankov is suspected of killing two Turkish nationals in a Moscow restaurant, 1992.
