<p>A convicted fraudster was ordered held in custody Friday at the federal jail in downtown Chicago as he awaits extradition to New York to face charges that he bilked a Mexican billionaire out of hundreds of millions of dollars.</p><p>During a hearing at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, an attorney for Vladimir Sklarov presented him as a family man with strong ties to the United States — and “a lot of reasons not to flee” while awaiting the outcome of his case.</p><p>Federal prosecutors, on the other hand, painted a picture of a convicted felon with a history of lying to courts and access to hundreds of millions of dollars and multiple foreign passports.</p><p>“He has the means, the money and the motive to flee,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Vincenza Lamonica Tomlinson said Friday.</p><p>Judge David Weisman agreed, finding Sklarov's character was “one of untrustworthiness.”</p><p>Sklarov will remain in federal custody and soon be transported to the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, where an indictment against him was filed. Weisman said New York prosecutors will then "proceed with the case as they see fit” but still moved to schedule a status hearing for Sklarov in Chicago next month.</p><p>Sklarov is a Ukrainian immigrant who grew up in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood and <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2026/05/05/vladimir-sklarov-ricardo-salinas-pliego-chicago-fraud-crime-lake-forest" target="_blank" >once lived in a mansion in Lake Forest</a>.