I've always been curious about those two organizations, specifically their activities in the United States. I'm more fond of Cosa Nostra from the sixties to present time, but I'd like to learn more about the Russian Mafia & Albanians in the U.S. I know that the Albanians had the Rudaj organization, but that's all I can really recall that was recent in the U.S. But as for the Russians? I don't know anything about their dealings in the U.S. I know that they got skimmed by the Colombo's in the eighties, but that's about it. Can anyone enlighten me?

Of all criminal groups, the Albanians are in my honest opinion the most overrated. You'll often -make that VERY often- find Albanians claiming that they have the biggest and baddest mafia in history, I should know because I have a load of Albanian friends. They are brutal, sure but they are extremely blue-collar. Heavy on the muscle, less on the finesse. Heroin and weapon trafficking and dealing, prostitution, extortion, contract killing and armed robberies are their activities of choice. A lot of Albanian gangs are even involved in lower level crime such as burglary. They are a force, but so are the minority organized sets of street gangs (not the majority petty thief sets).
As for the USA, the Rudaj gang tried to form its own family once and they definitely tried it on but they were no match for the American Mafia. Far from all of its members were ethnically Albanian, a load of them were Greek, Italian and Montenegrin. I think that even today a lot of Albanian criminals are associated with the American Mafia families.

The second most overrated is the 'Russian Mafia'
Again, they are a force. But they aren't the almighty criminal organization people make them out to be. First of, the best description for this type of groups would be 'Gangs from the former Soviet Union', but I realise 'Russian Mafia' sounds far more attractive. Groups throughout Europe and America described as the 'Russian mafia' are criminal gangs mostly composed of ethnic Russians (most Moscow bratvas like the Solntsevskaya Bratva), Russian and Ukrainian Jews, Georgians, Armenians, Chechens, Azerbaijanis or Assyrians from the former Soviet Union. All of these groups are involved in drug and arms trafficking, prostitution, extortion, contract killing, armed robbery, kidnapping and yes, burglary. On the other hand, you also have some higher level crime groups -mostly ethnic Russian ones- that are involved in non-violent internet fraud schemes and money laundering. These schemes don't involve any violence but do generate billions of dollars. In short, the 'Russian' crime groups are split between one half of largely ethnically Russian white-collar crime groups and another half of ethnic Russian, Jewish, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chechen and Assyrian blue-collar crime groups. Nevertheless, even the blue-collar groups can from time to time be involved in white-collar activity like money laundering and bank and identity fraud schemes.
In the USA, the 'Russian' groups that are the most active are the Jewish groups, the ethnic Russians and the Armenians. The Jewish groups are still active in New York and are likely to associate with the American Mafia. They are mostly involved in drug and arms dealing, extortion, murder, burglary, robbery and fuel schemes. Ethnic Russian groups are largely active in New York and Florida. Some groups are involved in mostly internet schemes, while other groups are involved in mostly violent crime. Armenians come in the form of the Armenian Power in Los Angeles. The AP is an organized street gang. It only has 200 official members but all in all these 200 member strong group is on par with any organized ( with the emphasize on 'organized') Crip, Blood, Mara, Sureno, Wah Ching, Southeast Asian street gang, Outlaw Motorcycle or Prison gang. They are involved in blue-collar activities but also in some white-collar activies such as the typical bank and identity frauds and also some fuel schemes.

Both type of groups are definitely a force, but they are far from almighty.

Heres a story about yaponchik one of the most powerful russain mobsters in the US of the 90s.

Vyacheslav Ivankov, nicknamed Yaponchik ("Little Japanese"), was, from shortly after his arrival in the United States in 1992 until his arrest by the FBI in 1995, a mysterious and even mythical figure. The speculations tossed around about him created an image of a man who was called "the father of extortion" and the Soviet Union's "most influential vor." He was the "leading crime boss of the Russian Far East" and was reported in the largest Russian language newspaper in New York City to be the "Red godfather" sent to New York by his fellow vory to organize and control Russian criminal activities there. U.S. authorities, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation, certainly seemed to believe and acted as if Ivankov were a major crime boss. Who is this man Ivankov, also known as Yaponchik? What was he doing here? And was he really the Russian crime boss? The Ivankov/Yaponchik case may be the quintessential illustration of how and why a mafia is created.



Yaponchik was allegedly born in the Soviet Republic of Georgia and grew up in Moscow. He was a champion amateur wrestler in his youth who first went to jail after a bar fight in which (according to his Moscow lawyer) he was defending the honor of a woman. After his release, he began to climb up the Soviet crime ladder--like so many others--by dealing stolen goods on the black market.

According to Russian law enforcement authorities. Yaponchik formed a criminal organization (called Solntsevskaya) in approximately 1980. Among its activities, this group used false police documents to search the homes of wealthy individuals and steal money and other valuables. In 1982 Yaponchik was caught and convicted for robbery, possession of firearms, forgery, and drug trafficking. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison and during his imprisonment (he served ten years) was supposedly initiated as a vor v zakone.

According to Yaponchik himself, his prison activities during this period antagonized the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which subsequently conspired with the FBI against him. In a 1995 interview with a Moscow correspondent, Yaponchik said that the Ministry could not forgive his efforts to reform the Soviet prison system while he was locked up in Siberia--efforts that were in support of his lifelong resistance to communism. The FBI, he says, was taken in by the criminal authorities who run the criminal state that was Soviet Russia.

That Vyacheslav Ivankov might not be just any ordinary Russian criminal could be surmised form his supposed acquaintance with Yuri Churbanov, the Brezhnev son-in-law who was involved in the Uzbek cotton scandal. His early release from prison in 1991 reportedly resulted from the intervention of a powerful politician and the bribery of a judge on the Russian Supreme Court.




Yaponchik came to the United States in March 1992 with a regular business visa indicating he would be working in the movie industry. How was a man with a felony conviction, ten years in prison, and a reputation as one of the most powerful criminals in Russia able to readily receive a visa to come to the United States? U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials told us that immigration officials in Moscow were overwhelmed and had neither the time nor resources to investigate the criminal backgrounds of all visa applicants. U.S. officials had to depend on both inept and corrupt Russian authorities for this background information.

The real reason for Yaponchik's being here is open to some dispute. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs advised the FBI in January 1993 that Yaponchik had come to the United States to "manage and control ROC [Russian Organized Crime] activities in this country." Handelman says, however, that his American police sources initially denied that they had received any such warning. Nonetheless, this advice was ultimately taken to heart by the FBI. Alexander Grant, news editor for "Noovoye Russkoye Slovo," told us in 1994 that Yaponchik was indeed the highest-ranking Russian criminal in the United States but that he was "not criminally active here." Grant said that Yaponchik had to get out of Russia because "it became too dangerous for him there--dangerous because of the new criminal entrepreneurs who don't respect the likes of Yaponchik."

Whatever his original reason for coming, Yaponchik was indeed criminally active after he arrived in the United States, but, as with so much else about him, the scope of his criminal activity is open to controversy. One view is that "Ivankov's New York branch of the Solntsevskaya gang had about 100 members and was recognized on the street as the premier Russian crime group in Brooklyn" and, further, that Ivankov's was the strongest of the Russian organized crime groups in this country. Similarly relying on FBI sources, Sterling concluded that "[m]uch as Lucky Luciano did with the American mafia sixty-odd years ago, Yaponchik is turning an assortment of unruly and loosely articulated Russian gangs on American soil into a modern, nationwide crime corporation." If there is any evidence to support any such assessment, however, it is not apparent.

When he was arrested by the FBI in June 1995, Yaponchik was charged with supervising the extortion of several million dollars form an investment advisory firm run by two Russian businessmen. He and three co-defendants were convicted of this extortion in July 1996. On the face of it, there was nothing particularly sophisticated about the crime. In fact, one is led to wonder why, if Yaponchik was indeed the boss of a large criminal organization and the most powerful Russian mobster in the United States, he was directly involved in arranging and negotiation with the extortion victims. Organized crime bosses are usually insulated from this sort of direct involvement. Further, it was alleged in the FBI's arrest complaint that the murder in Moscow of the father of one of the victims was part of the threat used to further the extortion. Yet in a telephone conversation dealing with this murder--a conversation that was a part of the arrest complaint--Ivankov, who was supposedly masterminding the scheme, seems ignorant of the murder. Finally, if Yaponchik were the new Lucky Luciano, where were the other charges that one might expect could have been derived from his over two years of high-level criminal activity before the particular extortion began in November 1994?






Ivankov is clearly a serious criminal. Information from Russian authorities, his prison experience, and even his tattoos all suggest that he is a vor. He probably is the toughest Russian criminal in the United States, but it is doubtful that he is or was the head of a major criminal organization or a mafia boss. There is no evidence that he attempted to gain monopoly control over any criminal activities or that he systematically used violence or corruption. On the basis of this single crime, it is difficult to assess the economic, physical, psychological, and societal harm caused by his offenses. The description of the crime itself, however, suggests that it was a rather blundering effort. Finally, returning to one of our mafia criteria of organizational capacity for harm, Yaponchik was said to have had only a loosely affiliated group of some ten people and not an extensive and sophisticated criminal organization.

In the meantime, Yaponchik has been sentenced to U.S. federal prison for nine years and seven months. In a recent interview from prison, Yaponchik accuses the FBI of feeding the myth of a Russian Mafia to prove the usefulness of their Russian section. They are, he says, "only tilting with windmills." According to Yaponchik, there is no myth about organized crime in Russia because everyone knows that "Russia is one uninterrupted criminal swamp." The criminals are in the Kremlin and the Duma (the legislature), and anyone who thinks that someone like him is the head of all these "bandits" is delirious.

For one thing, to call them "organizations" can be misleading, as they are more criminal enterprises than organized crime. Meaning you have Russian, Eastern European, or Balkan criminals coming together for a given criminal activity and then disbanding, later to regroup with each other or others for another criminal activity. These groups usually don't have the structure the LCN does and are not concerned with taking over huge pieces of territory. Much of the same hype, by both the media and law enforcement, was given to Albanian organized crime over the past decade as was given to Russian organized crime in the 1990's. Neither of these new ethnic groups "took over," as some predicted, but simply carved out a place for themselves. And there have been a number of examples of both working with the LCN in New York. The Russians in things like the gas tax scam, health care fraud, and stock fraud. The Albanians working as enforcers, burglars, etc. for the LCN.

For those who watch this stuff closely, there have been busts involving both Russian (Eurasian) and Albanian OC in recent years. In 2006, 26 people in an Eastern European crime ring were indicted in New York on charges of racketeering, extortion, armed robbery conspiracy, credit card fraud conspiracy, and illegal trafficking of narcotics, firearms, stolen luxury cars, fraudulent identification documents, and other stolen property. In 2008, 23 people from Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans were indicted in Las Vegas on charges of counterfeiting, credit card fraud, and identity theft. In 2009, 26 people from various Balkan countries were indicted in New Jersey for trafficking in drugs, untaxed cigarettes, counterfeit goods, and other contraband. In 2011, 99 people from an Armenian group were indicted in Los Angeles on charges of identity theft, credit card skimming, manufacturing counterfeit checks, kidnapping, extortion, and drug trafficking. These are just some examples.

Another big russain mob boss from the 90s is marat balugula. He organized his gang much like an italian mafia family. He also created the gasoline tax scam that usually gets credited to the italians particularly micheal franzese, when actually they were just cut in on balugulas already existing scam. Instead of competing with the italians, balugula realized it was much smarter to partner with them, and that made him and his organization an underworld powerhouse during that time period.

Most books, articles, etc. covering Franzese have said that he partnered with the Russians, who originally came up with the scam, and didn't invent it himself. He also partnered with Larry Iorizzo, who had also discovered the scam.

Yes i was just talking about people on here tend to forget that micheal franzese didnt do it alone and your right i forgot about lorizzo. I guess what was getting at was balugula got a lot of his power from partnering with italians, where as the rudaj organization went in the opposite direction and tried to compete with them, i remember reading about some showdown between the rudajs and the gambinos at a gas station or something. So i think that the rudaj's "strategy" of trying tocompete is the big reason they never reached the height of power that they strived for, along with the devastating prosecutions ofcourse.

Can someone explain to me the gas tax scam?

It says he was released in 2004. is he active today?

No i dont think hes active now, to my understanding it worked something like this, they would set up these "dummy corporations" that only existed on paper and they would buy and sell large quantities of gasoline and instead of paying the mandatory federal taxes on the transactions they would pocket it as profit and when the government came to collect the back taxes the company would evaporate and they would just create a new one. The govt said that if they werent so greedy they probly couldve continued doing it for another 10 or 15 years without getting caught.

Check out this site: http://russianmafiacards.com/

Actually the Russians didn't invent the scam. I think the scam had been around since the 60s and was being done by a few smart people here and there, but not on an 'organized crime' basis. They just made a few hundred k and then left the country before anyone wised up. The Russians were the first to do it on a huge scale though.

As for Balagula, he wasn't 'with' Franzese. Franzese tried shaking him down and Balagula reached out to Gaspipe Casso and Christy Tic, who scared Franzese away.

Yea i didnt mean to imply that he was " with" franzese, its just that sometimes some people on here make it seem like franzese was running the thing. The lucheses and marat were close, when another russain tried to shake balugula down and threaten to kill him casso put together a hit team and took the guy out.

Yup, i read Gas had the Gemini Twins take care of the guy. Testa was the shooter and Senter was the wheelman.

Here's how Raab basically described the "gasoline bootlegging" racket -

A new New York state law in the late 1970's or early 1980's gave the responsibility for paying the taxes to the final wholesaler who actually delivered the fuel to the retail gas chains. They figured this was easier to do instead of collecting them from all the gas stations themselves. The excise and sales taxes amounted to about 30 cents per gallon in the 1980's. The Russians, and later their LCN partners, formed "daisy chains" that supposedly transferred gasoline supplies to one another. There would be a sequence of paper transactions among five or six companies, although no exchanges actually occurred. To escape detection when state or federal authorities came looking for overdue taxes, a dummy or "burn" company was always listed on the transfer records as the one making the final sale to retail stations and collecting the taxes. Of course, the company never existed and was just used to bewilder the tax collectors. The Russians/LCN actually delivered the gasoline but kept the taxes for themselves.

Thanks for the explanations! I'm assuming this is impossible to pull off today?

Though I may be overlooking a case or two, most of the last ones were back in the 1990's. In 2001, there was a somewhat different case involving the Luccheses and the Russians. 7 people were indicted in New York on charges of racketeering and gasoline bootlegging involving an operation that paid protection money to the Luccheses and evaded New York gas taxes from 1996 to 2000 by using front companies and fraudulent paperwork to buy cheaper gas in New Jersey and sell it for below market rates on Long Island.

The larger groups from Moscow have a touch in USA and also USA is full of smaller groups that are on spot created by Russian criminals. South Florida is rumored to be now really filled up with Russian gangsters nowdays.

It's a pretty large subject to write on. I had made a Q&A thread some time ago which went inactive. But feel free to PM me or post here your questions. I got a large knowledge of Russian OC.