Does Bratva exist in the USA?

“The Izmaylovskaya gang (Russian: Измайловская группировка, from Izmaylovo District) was considered one of the country's most important and oldest Russian Mafia groups in Moscow and also had a presence in Tel Aviv, Berlin, Paris, Toronto, Miami and New York City.[25] It was founded during the 1980s under the leadership of Oleg Ivanov (Олег Иванов) and was estimated to consist of about 200 active members (according to other data of 300–500 people). In principle, the organization was divided into two separate bodies—Izmailovskaya and Gol'yanovskaya (Гольяновская),[26] which utilized quasi-military ranks and strict internal discipline. It was involved extensively in murder-for-hire, extortions, and infiltration of legitimate businesses.[27]”

“Red Mafia: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Mar-Jun 2002 by Johanna Granville

 

Robert 1. Friedman. Red Mafia: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 2000. 296 pp. $25.95, cloth.

In Red Mafia, investigative reporter Robert Friedman delves into the world of Russian organized crime, which he claims differs from the Italian La Cosa Nostra. Whereas the Italians usually refrain from harming journalists, prosecutors, judges, and innocent family members, the Russians will-in the words of a retired New York City policeman-- shoot anyone "just to see if their gun works" (xvii). Friedman impresses upon the reader the degree to which the Russian mafia is already deeply entrenched in the United States (especially Brighton Beach, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Denver) and overseas (in far-flung cities like Moscow, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Bogota, and Toronto). It is involved in a wide variety of activities such as car theft, prostitution, gasoline bootlegging, arms smuggling, cocaine and heroin trafficking, extortion (even of players in the National Hockey League), and an array of sophisticated white-collar computer crimes such as counterfeiting, credit card schemes, and insurance frauds. As Friedman points out, a large percentage of the Russian mobsters were Soviet Jews who immigrated to the United States, chiefly to the Brighton Beach area, in the 1970s. Ironically, whereas President Jimmy Carter thought he was championing human rights by supporting the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which withheld most-favoured-nation status from socialist countries that restricted Jewish emigration, he was actually welcoming in hardened criminals the Kremlin was only too happy to purge from the USSR. Lacking access to immigrants' criminal records, United States immigration officials even now continue to allow citizens from Eastern Europe and Eurasia with shady backgrounds to settle in the United States.”

“death by hot potato–Russian Mafia In USA

29092010

 

death by hot potato

Great location. On the Pacific Ocean. Home to a US Naval Base. Next to the Mexican border.

Another great location for organized crime.

1996: Russian Mafia Invades California, by Wayne Lutton

Russian gangsters – many of whom entered the United States as “refugees” — have spread their influence beyond the East Coast and are becoming a major criminal presence in California, according to State Attorney General Dan Lungren….The California Attorney General’s Office report notes thatduring the 1970s and 1980s, under the guise of the Russian-Jewish refugee program, “the KGB emptied their prisons of hard-core criminals, much like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro did during the Mariel boatlift of 1980.” The 1989 Lautenberg Amendment expanded refugee admissions from the Soviet Union to up to 50,000 per year. This was followed, in 1991, by provisions for legal immigration from the now independent states of the former USSR. Dubbed by Russian criminals as “the big store,” the United States is now home to criminal gangs from all 15 republics. Since the mid-1970s, the hub of Russian organized crime in the U.S. has been the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, New York, known as “Little Odessa.” From this center of emigre activity, they have spread their operations throughout greater New York, to Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, and Seattle.California is particularly vulnerable to Russian organized crime because only New York state has a larger population of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. These new crime groups have been identified in major California cities, includingLos Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. They maintain ties to criminal organizations back in Russia and are forging working agreements with other Latin American and Asian syndicates.

Frank Lautenberg is a Jewish Democratic Senator from New Jersey. The Lautenberg Amendment made special provisions to allow Jewish and Evangelical refugees to resettle in the US from the former Soviet Union, because Congress declared these groups “persecuted.” The refugees don’t need to show actual persecution to avail themselves of the special privileges. For more background, see this link.

 

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Lautenberg Amendment, celebrating the fact that over 440,000 “refugees” have resettled in the United States from the FSU and elsewhere as a result of this legislation, which Congress renews each year.

By 2000, the “Russian” mafia had already been well established across the United States.

COINCIDENCE?

 

May 2000, Go West, Young Comrade: The Russian Mob in America, by John William Touhy

According to the FBI, there are over 200 Russian mobs operating in American, in at least 17 cities in 14 states. At least four of those groups operate in California alone, with interests in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. These groups have linked with Russian organizations in New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, and Oregon to form an enormous criminal syndicate.

But officials were not too worried because supposedly the “Russian” mafia was not that organized. Famous last words.

Although, the government is quick to point out, and US authorities agree, that only about 300 of those gangs have some sort identifiable structure. However, some Russian mob experts argue that the government is wrong, that the Russian-based mobs, are, in fact, very organized, and only appear to have no structure, a tool they use to minimize contact within the organization for security purposes and to throw investigators off their trail.
Lose or not, the structure of these organizations on both sides of the Atlantic remains basically the same. Each group is led by a boss, called a “pa khan,” who controls four criminal groups, or cells within the organization, although, like the American Mafia, the Pakhan has only minimal contact with the men under him. Instead, he uses an intermediary called a ”brigadier.” In turn, the brigadier is watched over by two spies to ensure loyalty and to make sure he doesn’t get too much power within the organization.

So the cells report to a brigadier, who reports to the Pakhan, who has spies on the brigadier. At least that’s how it supposedly worked in 2000. The street criminal normally does not know who his boss is.

Some people know today that all the top “Russian” mobsters have Israeli passports. However, the FBI has known this for a long time.

In general, Friedman writes, state and federal law enforcement agencies were loath to go after Russian mobsters, instead devoting their energies to bagging Italian wiseguys, a traditional route to promotion. And because the Russian mob was mostly Jewish, it was a political hot potato, especially in the New York area, where the vast majority of refugees were being resettled by Jewish welfare agencies.

As for the FBI, which has the resources and the legal authority to investigate the Russian mob, Friedman says that were it not for the bureau’s “own sluggishness in addressing the problem, the Russian mob in  the United States would never have become as powerful as it is today.”  It wasn’t until 1994 that the bureau set up a special force to deal with Russian organized crime. By then, Friedman says, there were some five  thousand “hard-core Russian criminals” in the New York region. Yet the FBI’s spokesman in New York, Joe Valiquette, told Friedman, “The Russian Mafia has the lowest priority on the criminal pecking order.”

To be clear, the article says that by 1994: 1) there were already some five thousand hard-core Russian criminals in New York; 2) and this mafia was the lowest priority on the FBI’s pecking order; 3) because the fed and state agencies feared to go after them; 4) because the Russian mob is mostly Jewish.”