In 20 years of living in Russia, I NEVER had any trouble with the law. After a month of living in America, the police were already taking my mugshot.

It all started with a completely harmless desire to earn some extra money. As I said, we moved in with a Russian guy. He found out we were having trouble finding work and offered to help, saying his acquaintance was looking for people for something related to the restaurant business. Without thinking twice, we agreed.

The job involved distributing pizza flyers. Here is how it looked: they put you in a car and drive you to a hotel. There, you have to walk past security without raising suspicion. Then your task is to go around all the hotel rooms and slide a flyer under every door. A perfectly harmless job, right?

For the first 4 hours in several hotels, we managed to just walk past security without any questions. In others, they stopped us immediately saying: “No, guys. Get out!” A couple of times we had to climb over a fence and use the back entrance.

And then we arrived at the Universal Studios hotels. We successfully bypassed the first 3 floors and went up to the 4th. We split up there, I went left, Dima went straight. We agreed to meet in the lobby in half an hour. Having finished the 4th floor, I decided to go down the emergency stairs instead of the elevator. I open the door, and there is a security guard standing there, looking at me suspiciously. The dialogue went something like this:

• Stop, what room?
• Umm... (he sees the flyers in my hands)
• Oh, pizza flyers? Are you aware that this is illegal activity? Follow me.

All the way, the security guard, with a completely impassive look, asked about my life, who I am, where I'm from, what hobbies I have, etc. To my question: “What are we waiting for? Will you let me go?” he replied with an even more impassive look: “No, the police are coming now and they will take you away=)”

Great... The police were definitely not in my plans.

In the end, everything worked out: they made copies of my documents, took a couple of photos, and let me go with the words: “If you show up here again, we will arrest you.”

Moral: trust, but verify. Especially if you are dealing with Russians.