Deputy accused of conning Olympic skater to sign over will as he died from disease

Police have charged Marina Billings over alleged exploitation of speed skater Boris Leikin

A married Idaho booking deputy has been accused of duping a former Olympic speed skater, after making herself the beneficiary of his will, only to then abandon him when he was dying with mad cow disease.

Olympian Boris Leikin passed away from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, in July 2021. Prior to his death, however, the speed skater began a romance with 49-year-old Marina Billings, despite the fact that she was married at the time.

As the Daily Mail first reported, Ms Billings, as well as her husband Robert, have both been charged with financial exploitation of Mr Leikin. Neither has been implicated in his death directly, although police do admit that the couple’s behaviour may have hastened Mr Leikin’s decline from the deadly disease.

Ms Billings and her husband Robert both face charges of financial exploitation and aggravated abuse.

Jeff Hall, chief deputy at the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office, has clarified that the couple is not being charged with murder for the time being.

“In a murder charge, we would accuse someone of directly causing the death of someone else and doing that unlawfully,” he told Fox 13.

“In this instance, the allegation is that these people created circumstances that compromised a vulnerable adult’s health, not necessarily that they directly caused a death.”

Boris Leikin’s Idaho home (Google)

Ms Billings has also been placed on administrative leave from her duties at the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office while an internal investigation is ongoing.

According to friends of Mr Leikin, he quickly became ill after he started to date Ms Billings. The pair originally met on an online chat forum for Russian ex-pats, as Ms Billings had previously moved from Siberia to the US in 2007.

Shortly after their romance began, she moved into Mr Leikin’s Cottonwood Heights home in Idaho. As court documents obtained by ABC 4 show, it was at this point that the 1998 Olympian first became gravely sick.

From there, the deputy told neighbours she was caring for the skater as well as managing his finances while he was hospitalised. Following his release, it is alleged that she continued to act as his caretaker, isolating him from others, before forcing him to sign an amended version of his will – in spite of his rapidly deteriorating physical and mental state.