Former Ranger Arthur Kaliyev conned me out of thousands and owes money around NHL, model ex-girlfriend

Stunning model Lauren Mochen was readying for a romantic trip to the Bahamas with beau NHL player Arthur Kaliyev in the summer of 2023 when the first serious signs of trouble surfaced.

About a month before the trip, the 24-year-old onetime New York Ranger told his then-21-year-old girlfriend that his mother, Rumiya, gave him a check that he wanted to give to her.

Kaliyev, an Uzbekistan-born forward who was playing for the Los Angeles Kings at the time, told his girlfriend that it was to repay her for the money he had “accidentally’’ taken from Mochen’s PayPal account to pay workers at his family’s shipping company.

The hockey player, whom the adult-content model had allowed access to her PayPal account, said he intended to use his mother’s $400 check to pay back a portion of the amount he owed Mochen. 

Kaliyev sent Mochen a picture of his mother’s check, and she mobile-deposited it. 

The player — allegedly hiding a gambling problem that would eventually involve tens of thousands of dollars in debts to teammates — then informed Mochen his own bank account was frozen, according to Mochen. Kaliyev claimed the freeze was on account of his family’s financial dealings, she told The Post.

He added that he needed the money back, she said.

Kaliyev, whom she’d been dating about a year, promised he’d repay her once his account was unfrozen, so she sent him through Apple Cash the $400 that she understood she had deposited in her account, she said.

The athlete then asked her to do the same thing with more checks from his family’s company: deposit them in her account and send him the money digitally because of his account issues.

There was one check for $1,500, two checks for $2,300 apiece and another for $1,000 in the span of about a week, for a total of $7,500. 

Mochen followed along.

“Maybe I was gullible and believed it,” said Mochen, now 22, who is originally from Michigan. 

The online model, who is based in Los Angeles, then flew to meet Kaliyev in Miami, where he spends his offseasons, and the two jetted off to the Bahamas together — a trip planned to celebrate his birthday.

When they landed, Mochen checked her bank-account balance.

To her shock, it read negative $7,000. 

“The bank calls me and says, ‘You cashed three fraudulent checks, who did these come from? Why did you do it?’” Mochen recalled to The Post. 

“And right away, I panicked and was  like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t know what’s going on.’ And I was like, ‘Can you guys double check? There’s just no way this is happening.’”

According to Mochen, the bank told her each of the checks bounced, but she had already paid Kaliyev $7,500 of her own money, in addition to what he already owed her. 

“The bank was like, ‘No, you need to pay the difference. Your account is negative, and once you do, we’re going to close your accounts. You can’t have an account with us anymore.’”

The episode turned out to be just part of a disturbing three-year saga in which Mochen alleges Kaliyev scammed her out of more than $50,000 to fund what she described as a rampant gambling addiction that has gone unaddressed by figures around the league. 

The Post reached out to Kaliyev for comment on this story, but did not receive a response.

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According to Mochen, the pair’s relationship began the summer after Kaliyev’s first full season with the Kings in 2022.

The couple had met through mutual friends — Kaliyev played youth hockey in Michigan — and their romance continued through his stint with the Rangers last season before it came to an end this past summer. 

Kaliyev signed a one-year, $775,000 deal this offseason with the Ottawa Senators and appeared in a couple of games in October. He is currently assigned to their AHL affiliate in Belleville, Ontario. 

The Post conducted multiple interviews and reviewed a police incident report, bank statements, various text messages and other documentation to corroborate details of Mochen’s sometimes disturbing account of the pair’s time together.

Mochen said there were enough good things to keep her in the relationship with Kaliyev — for a while at least. 

She brought Kaliyev home to meet her family in Michigan. He played golf with her stepfather. Mochen’s family flew out to LA to spend Christmas with them.

Mochen’s mother, Stefanie, said Kaliyev often confided in her during his relationship with her daughter. 

“He said, ‘You know, it’s so nice, I finally feel like I have a mom in my life,” Stefanie told The Post in a recent phone call. 

Messages provided by Mochen and reviewed by The Post show how the young woman frequently expressed how much she cared about his well-being — including his financial security.

“I funded like his entire life the [2023-24] season,” Mochen said. “Anything he needed, I was paying for. 

“It was unfortunate, but he [told me his family was] taking his payroll, they’re such scary people. But then randomly, [he’d] just show up in new Gucci shoes. 

“He did some strange things. If the TV was on, and it wasn’t a sporting game, the TV had to be off. He refused to watch anything besides sports. 

“He behaved as if he had bets placed on every single game that was on my TV. He would sit there checking his phone, checking and flipping back and forth between games.” 

Mochen said that when Kaliyev began speaking about finances with her, he switched to communicating on Snapchat, where messages disappear after 24 hours.

It was there that Kaliyev asked Mochen for access to her PayPal account, noting issues with his own money-sending accounts — with the express understanding he would pay her back for anything he took, she said. 

Mochen alleged that Kaliyev painted her a terrifying picture of his family, who he claimed were physically abusive, controlled his NHL income, were involved in criminal behavior and did not want them dating. The Post does not have any information supporting these claims about Kaliyev’s family.

She said that meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, Kaliyev used her personal information and a different phone number to create a separate PayPal account.

The move allegedly led to Kaliyev stealing an unknown additional sum that isn’t included in the $14,114.88 she claims he took through her original PayPal. 

After her issues with Kaliyev’s checks and her bank — and the pair had broken up — Mochen filed an incident report on Sept. 4 at her hometown police station in Saginaw Township, Mich., to begin the process of disputing charges with her financial institution related to Kaliyev’s alleged  fraud. 

That same month, she posted a multi-part series on TikTok about her saga with the NHL player.

Mochen said she further intends to press charges. 

To date, Kaliyev has not been charged and the allegations in the incident report have not been tested in court. If Kaliyev is charged, it would be for larceny, according to the incident report obtained by The Post. 

Larceny is the unlawful taking of someone’s personal property with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of it, without the use of force or violence. 

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Mochen isn’t the only one affected by Kaliyev’s alleged disturbing money habits.

A text message from his best friend and current SKA St. Petersburg wing Igor Larionov II provided by Mochen shows Larionov claiming longtime Kings defenseman Drew Doughty told him Kaliyev owed several Kings players “around $50,000” over the years for a collection of “fines, fees, group bets and betting pools.” 

A second current Kings player confirmed to Mochen over Snapchat recently that Kaliyev still owes money to players on the team.

About a month before the Kings waived Kaliyev in January, former Los Angeles general manager Rob Blake approached Kaliyev’s longtime agent, Ian Pulver, about the forward still needing to tip Kings trainers from the season before, a well-placed source said.

Several weeks passed, and when Blake found out Kaliyev still hadn’t paid, he told both Pulver and Kaliyev that he wouldn’t waive the player or trade him until he was squared away with those he owed, the source said.

Mochen claimed, and text messages from Kaliyev appear to confirm, that Kaliyev was even barred from practices over the unpaid tips.

Kaliyev informed Mochen of the predicament by text Jan. 2 and said he didn’t have the money to pay the trainers. 

“Stuff like this makes me boil,” Kaliyev wrote to Mochen.

Mochen ended up giving Kaliyev the money in cash under the guise of it coming from her roommate and longtime best friend, Krissy Spaulding, in hopes that he would feel more inclined to pay her back. 

Once Mochen paid Kaliyev, he apparently shelled out tips to the trainers, and the Kings placed Kaliyev on waivers on Jan. 5. 

Spaulding, who confirmed she had knowledge of Mochen’s plan to use her as a ploy, said Kaliyev only thanked her and never attempted to pay her back. 

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Mochen said the first time she confronted Kaliyev about his alleged excessive gambling was shortly after the pair had gone to open a joint bank account at Chase Bank in October 2024.

Mochen said a banker embarrassingly told them Kaliyev was banned from all main branches of Chase Bank. 

“I had his Social Security card, his passport, his ID, everything in a folder,” Mochen said. 

“She goes, ‘I’m sorry, but you guys need to leave the bank. … Somebody’s using your [Kaliyev’s] Social Security number and taking out loans and taking out credit cards, but it’s in a different name.’”

The banker said it was under the name of Kaliyev’s father, Vadim Simakov.

She said the pair then went to a bank known as BMO and opened an account there. 

Mochen said the pair did this in consultation with Kaliyev’s agent, Pulver, to ensure that Kaliyev’s parents didn’t have access to it. 

She added that this is when she began to realize just how bad things were.

With access to this account, Mochen said, she asked Kaliyev about the rate at which he was draining his money. He sent her a screenshot of his private account — reviewed by The Post — that included several transactions with sites such as Crypto.com and FanDuel as well as an associate who placed sports bets for Kaliyev, according to Mochen. 

Mochen has reached out to the people whose names were on the receiving end of her unwitting PayPal transactions and was pointed in the direction of the gambling site Bovada, an offshore sports betting market that is illegal in the United States.

Bovada, which has received several cease-and-desist letters from different states, operates out of Costa Rica. 

Sports betting is illegal in California, where the couple spent most of their time, Mochen said.

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Pulver, Kaliyev’s agent, would have heard allegations about his client’s gambling habits as early as the player’s rookie season with the Kings in 2021-22, according to a former Kings executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The source said Kings trainers were the first to raise questions about Kaliyev and gambling during his early years in Los Angeles. 

The ex-Kings exec also said a conversation about the gambling allegations was had with Pulver and Kaliyev at the start of his tenure in LA. The two denied the accusations, and it was never addressed again. 

Mochen said Pulver told her he has never been paid by Kaliyev, though he has represented the player since 2020.  

The same ex-Kings official also attested to hearing Pulver complain about not getting paid. 

Pulver neither confirmed nor denied the claims when contacted by The Post.

“I respect the confidentiality of my relationships with my players,” Pulver said. “I have no comment on anything that has to do with any private or personal matter with my client.” 

It is unclear whether the Rangers ever approached Pulver about Kaliyev’s gambling, but it is believed that even if members of the organization had an inkling, the extent of the issue was never known. 

Before the Rangers officially declined to extend Kaliyev a qualifying offer, he was rehabbing and training at Prentiss Hockey Performance in Stamford, Conn., where several Rangers and local NHLers train in the offseason. 

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According to an industry source, sometime in June, the Rangers were informed Kaliyev had changed his training schedule by pushing it back a day. 

When the team reached out to Pulver to ask why, the source said the agent told the team Kaliyev was going to Atlantic City for the weekend and didn’t want to come in the next day.

The Rangers picked up Kaliyev off waivers from the Kings in January of last season, but he was limited to just 14 games before he suffered his second broken clavicle in the span of six months. 

When Kaliyev was first scratched by the Rangers on Feb. 1, he was angrier than ever, Mochen said.

She said she and Kaliyev had multiple lengthy phone calls in the days after his injury, including one that lasted three hours, in which Kaliyev told her he was going to kill himself.

According to text messages provided by Mochen and reviewed by The Post, Pulver mentioned to Mochen getting Kaliyev help through the NHL and NHLPA on March 11. 

Mochen then brought up the NHL Player Assistance Program to Kaliyev on March 14.

“No, don’t even start with the program, don’t even start,” Kaliyev said. “Please. Just take off the board right now.” 

This was approximately when Mochen and Larionov went to Pulver alerting him of Kaliyev’s threats and insisting Kaliyev needed help. 

“Every single time I brought up gambling, it was a freak-out,” Mochen said. “If it was in person, I’ve got a fist to my face. He’s screaming at me, ‘I’m a scumbag, I’m f–ked up. He hopes I die. He hopes I get hit by a car.’ Over me just saying, ‘Do you gamble?’

“He never actually got physical, but I’d say the entire time I was in New York, I would look at him wrong and he was [hurling] threats of, ‘I’m going to end you, I’m going to hurt you.’ Shaking fist, clenched teeth.”

Pulver connected Mochen with Dr. Joel Gold, a Brooklyn-based psychiatrist who consults for the NHLPA, in early April to get Kaliyev help. 

Mochen told Gold what had been going on during her relationship with Kaliyev. 

In their last phone call on April 8, Mochen said, Dr. Gold offered her free therapy for her troubles. 

Gold recently told Mochen he could not respond to a request for comment, citing doctor-patient confidentiality, according to text messages viewed by The Post. 

In the same back-and-forth, Dr. Gold asked Mochen if she believed Kaliyev would go for treatment for a gambling addiction.

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The NHL and NHLPA were made aware of Mochen’s allegations, which Mochen had posted online.

But the league told The Post it had looked into the matter and there was “no substantiation that anything Kaliyev was doing was in violation of our rules or applicable law.” 

Mochen said she never heard from the NHL or NHLPA. 

The Senators were also aware of Mochen’s TikTok series. 

When reached by The Post for comment, Ottawa deferred to the league. 

In a desperate attempt to get some answers, Mochen said, she reached out to Kaliyev’s sister, Elvina, a professional tennis player, on Instagram on March 17. 

She informed Elvina of what had been going on throughout the course of her relationship with Kaliyev. 

According to messages provided by Mochen and reviewed by The Post, Elvina said their parents were tough on them when it came to sports but not only did they know about Mochen and her relationship with Kaliyev, they were “fine” with it. 

When Mochen mentioned the gambling, Elvina said that was the reason her parents had taken control of Kaliyev’s bank account. 

“Because he would literally just blow all the money away,” Elvina wrote to Mochen. “And my mom has been fighting about that with him for a while now, but I didn’t believe it was this bad. 

“I can’t believe you’re dealing with all of this. I mean you are clearly trying to help in every way possible. 

“Thank you so much for that.”