The former girlfriend of NHL forward Arthur Kaliyev says he pulled her into what she describes as a long and messy spiral driven by his gambling habit, and that it ended with him taking tens of thousands of dollars from her.
Lauren Mochen, a model who dated Kaliyev for about three years, has been sharing her story on TikTok and says everything she experienced pointed back to one thing. As she puts it, he was gambling constantly and using her money to do it.
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2022 Draft presented by @WinmarkResale pic.twitter.com/RySIlyxyKT
— LA Kings (@LAKings) July 6, 2022
Mochen accuses NHL star Kaliyev of gambling her money away
According to Mochen, the whole situation started quietly enough. She says Kaliyev would tell her he was having issues with his online banking and would ask to borrow money or use her PayPal account. At first, she said she trusted him because they had already been talking every day for months. But she now believes those early requests were the beginning of what she calls a long scam to fund a hidden gambling problem.
In her first TikTok video, Mochen says that Kaliyev even created fake personalities online as part of the ruse. She describes a slow buildup of excuses, delays, and stories that eventually led to him asking for access to her PayPal account so he could move money around.
Hurt In private. Heal in silence. Smile in public.
— Lauren Mochen (@LaurenMochen) January 21, 2023
She recalls the moment things truly crossed a line. They were supposed to meet in Miami during the playoffs when, she says, he texted her with what he called a weird request.
According to Mochen, he wrote, “Weird request. My family owes some people some money and I need to send it out to them but my PayPal is suspended. I have all this money, I just can’t send it out. Do you think I can put my card on your PayPal and send it out through your PayPal?” She says he added that he might be hurt by his family if he did not pay them, which frightened her into helping.
From there, she says he began pulling money from her card. He apologized and told her he would pay it back, but Mochen says that did not happen. Instead, she claims she got pulled into a three year stretch of covering costs, transferring money to him, and depositing checks that kept bouncing. She says he blamed everything on frozen bank accounts that he said were controlled by his family.
https://t.co/Sx9zdzKQUV follow along on my days w me <3 pic.twitter.com/H9ab95tObO
— Lauren Mochen (@LaurenMochen) June 25, 2025
The first major red flag for her came in the summer of 2023. She told the New York Post that Kaliyev gave her a check for $400 that he said would repay her for part of the roughly $15,000 he had accidentally taken from her PayPal to pay workers at his family’s shipping company. She deposited it without thinking twice. Then came more checks: $1,500, two checks for $2,300 each, and another for $1,000. She cashed them and sent him the money digitally because she still believed his account issues were real.
Only after they returned from a Bahamas vacation did she learn her account was overdrawn by $7,500. The bank told her all the checks had bounced. That was when she said she realized something was seriously wrong. She recalls him slipping up one day and saying, “Hey, my parents take all my payroll.”
From there, she says, things kept escalating. Mochen claims he leaned on her to cover almost everything he needed, telling her his family had seized his finances. She told the Post, “I funded like his entire life the 2023 to 24 season. Anything he needed, I was paying for.”
At the same time, she says she began noticing behavior that made her wary of his gambling. She claims he constantly watched sports and would not allow anything else on TV. According to her, “He behaved as if he had bets placed on every single game that was on my TV. He would sit there checking his phone, checking and flipping back and forth between games.”
She also says he used Snapchat to talk about money because messages disappear. That was where he asked for her PayPal login. She later learned he used her information to set up a separate PayPal account under a different phone number. Between that account and the original one, she says he ended up owing her more than $14,000 plus additional losses she alleges came from unauthorized transfers.
Mochen files incident report against Kaliyev
After their breakup, she filed an incident report on September 4 in Saginaw Township, Michigan to dispute the charges and begin documenting what she says happened. On TikTok, she says that after speaking with his sister, she confirmed that Kaliyev had lied. Mochen also claims his sister told her the gambling was the reason the family had taken control of his money. As Mochen put it, “He created this big, long, fake, I’m in danger, I need help, but really he was just gambling all his money away.”
She says she now intends to pursue further charges, though Kaliyev has not been charged with any crime.
Mochen also claims that she was not the only one affected, saying that Kaliyev owed several Los Angeles Kings teammates around $50,000 from what she described as fines, fees, group bets, and betting pools. According to her, even Kings trainers raised concerns about his gambling during his rookie season. The team reportedly spoke with Kaliyev and his agent, Ian Pulver, but both denied anything was wrong.
Kaliyev, now with the Ottawa Senators organization, signed a one year deal worth $775,000 in the offseason and has since been assigned to their AHL affiliate in Belleville.
ReadWrite has reached out to the Ottawa Senators and the NHL for comment.
Featured image: New York Rangers via YouTube / Lauren Mochen via TikTok
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