A Vicodin-addicted retired Miss Russia was back in court and back in trouble today after prosecutors revealed she has been hoarding and bingeing on her prescription meds while muddling through a court-monitored Bronx drug rehab program.
The svelte, 39-year-old former Miss Universe finalist, Anna Malova — crowned Miss Russia in 1998 — had nearly been yanked from the program last year after slapping a female patient and making unauthorized trips to the refrigerator.
“There’s no question, your honor. Miss Malova is struggling with drug treatment,” the lawyer for the green-eyed lovely, Robert Gottlieb, told a Manhattan Criminal Court judge today.
Malova has got to make it through rehab, a judge warned her. Otherwise, she’ll be booted from the program and her lengthy prescription fraud and shoplifting indictment will be back on the docket.
Typically, drug-dependent defendants must first plead guilty before getting a program; Malova, charged with filtching and filling prescription sheets from two shrinks, had been allowed to enter rehab without a guilty plea out of deportation concerns.
David Lauscher, an assistant district attorney with the office of the city-wide special narcotics prosecutor, told the judge today that the longer Malova teeters on the edge of flunking rehab, the harder it becomes to present a case against her should she go to trial.
“She’s been using her prescription medication to get high,” Lauscher told Judge Richard Weinberg. “The prosecution’s case has been prejudiced because there is no plea.”
The judge said he’d give her one more chance.
“If you come back with a bad report on May 1, you are going to plead guilty” or go to trial, Weinberg told Malova, whose latest drug test was taken this morning.
” Now it’s up to you,” the judge added. “Come back with a bad report and you have your choice of poisons. Got it?”
“Got it,” Malova answered. “Thank you so much.”
“Bad report? It’s over,” the judge repeated.
Outside court, Gottlieb stressed that Malova understands the seriousness of her situation. The drug program, “doesn’t want to kick her out,” he added.
Malova, a physician in her native Russia, had moved to the U.S. to pursue a modeling career, and had been linked romantically to billionaire hedge-fund big George Soros and comedian Garry Shandling. She’s due back in court May 1.