Ilie V. Leading a secretive life, he is widely held to have been the main perpetrator of two bomb attacks, which sought to exacerbate tensions between Romania and Austria-Hungary in the buildup to World War I. His terrorist actions, and especially the letter bomb which he sent to the Hungarian Catholic Bishopric in Debrecen , occurred shortly before, and are probably connected with, the Sarajevo Assassination. He continued to make return trips to Romania, which finally arrested him upon entering the war โthough he managed to escape, he remained on Romanian soil, only leaving on return visits to the Russian Republic.
Profiting from favorable circumstances, and nominally serving the anti-Bolshevik Moldavian Democratic Republic , he became commander of its 1st Moldavian Regiment in late In short time, his position and his application of a communist program eroded the Republic's prestige, and his soldiers began openly threatening the Bessarabian government. Briefly emerging as a drill instructor for the White movement in Vladivostok , he made efforts to settle in the Empire of Japan , but was chased out for engaging in fraudulent business deals.
After creating scandal in the Shanghai International Settlement , he spent the early interwar mainly on the French and Italian Rivieras , finding himself at odds with police. He was presumed dead after , when the Romanian media circulated a farewell letter he had sent from San Francisco. He only returned to history in the s, a conjectural ally of the Soviet Union and the Romanian communist regime.
In old age, he retreated from political affairs and became a Romanian Orthodox monk, serving a community in Transylvania. His birth certificate is presumed lost, but a sworn testimony he provided in gives his birth date as July 21, , naming his parents as Vasile and Alexandra; [ 4 ] his father is also credited as "Vasile Constantin", [ 6 ] and Ilie himself is sometimes known with the Russian patronymic , rendered in Romanian as "Ilie Vasilievici".
He benefited from the disorganization of Romanian intelligence services, who were still in the process of establishing themselves. He registered and was paid monthly as a Romanian Land Forces counterintelligence operative in It was therefore easy for him to attract everyone's sympathy. He turned himself into a nationalist and was always present at nationalist rallies.
