Inside bizarre shooting of alleged ‘ex’ of fake Mar-a-Lago heiress

The alleged ex-boyfriend of a woman who posed as a Rothschild heiress at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last year says he suffered “multiple gunshot wounds” in a bizarre shooting outside a Canadian resort last week — and is now too afraid to stay in that country, according to his lawyer.

Meanwhile, a mystery deepens around the man questioned by police and the family of the alleged victim’s ex-wife.

Valeriy Tarasenko, 44, claims he was shot three times in the Oct. 7 incident in the parking lot of the Estérel resort in Estérel, Quebec, where he reportedly owns a weekend home. Tarasenko, a Ukrainian entrepreneur who runs businesses in Montreal and Miami, returned to his home in the US after the alleged shooter was let go by police, his lawyer told The Post.

“He left Quebec not to avoid being questioned but because of fears for his safety,” said Miami attorney Steven Veinger, who represented Tarasenko in a domestic dispute with Inna Yashchyshyn, a Ukrainian-born entrepreneur who was photographed with Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) last year on the Mar-a-Lago golf course. At the time, Tarasenko claimed that Yashchyshyn was posing as a fake heiress, Anna de Rothschild, to gain access to the property. Yashchyshyn told The Post she did not pose as a fake heiress.

The photos emerged just days after dozens of plainclothes FBI agents raided the Trump estate in search of classified materials in August, and led to questions about security at the Palm Beach retreat of the former president.

With the shooting at the village nestled in the Laurentian mountains, north of Montreal, Veinger said that Tarasenko suffered wounds as bullets grazed his head and pelvis and severed one of his fingers, which has since been reattached, according to reports.

Veinger said his client was “disappointed” that Quebec police allowed the alleged shooter to go free this week. Authorities there arrested and questioned Richard Goodridge, 53, who is allegedly connected to several Quebec motorcycle gangs, in what they described as a “targeted” shooting but did not charge him, according to the Montreal Gazette.

A spokeswoman for the Quebec police said earlier this week that the man had been released on a promise to re-appear in court if charges are laid, the newspaper reported.

“[Tarasenko] doesn’t know why the man was released, but he believes he is the one who shot him,” Veinger said.

A day before the shooting, Goodridge, who is allegedly connected to the Hell’s Angels in Montreal, reportedly appeared at the Montreal doorstep of Yury Manakhov, Tarasenko’s former stepfather-in-law, according to La Presse, which reproduced a video of the exchange captured on Manakhov’s security camera.

The video shows a man the newspaper identified as Goodridge in a black T-shirt emblazoned with a white skull. He introduces himself to Manakhov as Richard and says that he is “a very good friend” of Manakhov’s stepdaughter, Anna Kovalenko Tarasenko — Valeriy’s former wife.

“I’m trying to make all the charges drop,” says the man that La Presse identified as Goodridge, although it’s not clear what he is referring to, the newspaper reported.

Years earlier, Manakhov had sued Kovalenko Tarasenko, for $370,000 that he had loaned her in 2011. Manakhov told a Quebec court that his stepdaughter committed acts of “theft, signature forgery, bank fraud, automobile fire and threats.” Manakhov won the case after Kovalenko Tarasenko’s appeal was dismissed, and the court ordered the seizure and sale of a plot of land that she owned with Tarasenko in Estérel as well as a condo at the resort and another condo in Montreal.

One source told The Post they believe Tarasenko may have staged his own shooting to make himself look like a victim.

Last month, Tarasenko told The Post that he feared for his life partly because, he claimed, Yashchyshyn was linked to Russian oligarchs — an allegation she denied in interviews with The Post. At the time of the shooting, Yashchyshyn told The Post, she was in Miami, and had no idea what had taken place until she read the news reports. Tarasenko said he had met with the FBI and handed agents information about Yashchyshyn’s alleged ties to some of the worst criminals in Russia.

But Tarasenko’s own associations have long raised scrutiny after his one-time stepfather-in-law, Yury Manakhov, said in a 2012 affidavit filed in Quebec Superior Court that “as far as I know, Valery [sic] has never worked and he is involved in some unclear activities.”

Yashchyshyn, 33, told The Post earlier this week that she has had “absolutely nothing to do with Tarasenko” since she left him last year. In an exclusive series of interviews, the Miami-based Yashchyshyn said that she had been involved in a romantic relationship with Tarasenko that quickly went sour when he allegedly sought to “control” and hold her hostage. She claimed that he forced her to set up myriad limited liability companies that he controlled and a Florida-based charity when they were together.

Yashchyshyn said she knew nothing about the shooting at the Canadian resort last week before reading about it in the Canadian press.

“The only time I have been to that village was to stay with the Tarasenkos as they own a cottage blocks away from the where the alleged shooting took place,” she told The Post in an email.

Earlier this year, Tarasenko’s 18-year-old daughter Sofiya claimed in court papers that Yashchyshyn had abused her after she had been hired as a nanny for his two daughters in 2014 — allegations that Yashchyshyn vigorously denied. When the family sought a restraining order against her, Yashchyshyn fired back and got one against Tarasenko, she said, adding that he had threatened her and her relatives in the US if she did not return to him.

Last month, a Miami-Dade County judge dismissed Tarasenko’s case against Yashchyshyn, according to court papers seen by The Post.

 “I was awarded an eight-year ‘no contact’ order, meanwhile, having all charges dropped against me,” she told The Post.