His hillside villa on the French Riviera overlooks Cannes.
He's buying a Riva Vertigo 63, an Italian-crafted yacht with that sleeps 12, and he tools around in a sleek Aston Martin V12 Vanquish coupe and a Shelby Mustang.
But Nikolai Dozortsev's lavish lifestyle will take a 180-degree turn tomorrow when he's sentenced in Brooklyn federal court as the favorite money launderer for a cabal of international gangsters -- including Europe's version of the Dapper Don.
He faces up to two decades behind bars.
The 44-year-old Dozortsev was born in Ukraine, while it was still under communist rule.
At 9, his family moved to New York, where his dad quickly adapted to capitalism, founding a liquor import-export firm.
"Nicky" became a US citizen and discovered a lucrative line of work that stretched all the way back to the old USSR.
He joined forces with Ricardo Fanchini, a Pole who was "Europe's most significant organized crime figure -- the European equivalent of John Gotti," said Russ Benson, a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in Rome.
Fanchini also reportedly had connections with alleged arms smuggler Viktor Bout, who was extradited to New York Nov. 16.
Dozortsev became Fanchini's "trusted confidant," his "US connection," coordinating drug and cigarette smuggling from New York City, Benson said.
But his major role was as money man for the syndicate -- which is suspected of eliminating competition by rubbing out rivals, he said.
Its illegal business, Benson said, "easily exceeded $50 million a year."
Since the early '80s, the group had been distributing and transporting large quantities of cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin throughout Southeast Asia and Europe -- ultimately importing it into the US.
Dozortsev laundered the profits through shell corporations, off-shore real-estate investments and by funneling millions through bank accounts under mob control, Arthur T. Morrison, a DEA agent in New York, wrote in an affidavit.
For years, the organization's name had kept popping up in probes by the DEA and police agencies across Europe.
But the group stayed in business by taking advantage of the disappearance of border controls in the European Union to move across national boundaries.
That changed in late 2006, when the DEA, Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, the Belgian federal police, and the Polish national police met in Poland to coordinate a strategy to bring down the Fanchini organization.
DEA's New York office took the lead, taping hundreds of conversations from wiretaps on phones used by Dozortsev.
In 2007, police in Romania began focusing on the group's illegal cigarette trafficking.
Then Dutch cops learned the group was behind a smuggling operation involving more than 1 million ecstasy pills.
Using information collected by both the Europeans and DEA, Brooklyn federal prosecutors secured an indictment against Fanchini, who was busted by Scotland Yard at his Mayfair residence in London.
DEA agents in New York arrested Dozortsev, and his half-brother, Arthur Dozortsev.
All three pleaded guilty to a variety of charges -- Fanchini was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Arthur Dozortsev received probation.
In addition to 20 years in prison, Nikolai Dozortsev faces forfeiture of his homes and expensive toys -- not to mention a 2.19-carat diamond.
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