By the way, could you tell us something about organized crime in Latvia? Who are considered the most important bosses, how is the law enforcement situation etc.

All I know that there are individual or groups of hackers who get into such operations. However there are groups that for example produce devices for example to read your credit card info from an ATM if they have attached it there and you've entered your card. But, unfortunately I do not got large information sources on that kind of sector, sadly.



The shakedown was done while Balagula was leading the group as far as I remember. They paid to the Italian Mafia due that at those years the Russian Mafiya was really the Jewish-Russian Mafiya as people stated it before. They were small in numbers and nothing compared to the groups that came up in late 80's and troughout 90's. So they had no other choice but to pay up, unless they wanted to be taken out.

In the early 90's when Ivankov arrived to USA, he built up a brigade of around 100 men who were sportsmen or ex-army/spetsnaz/kgb figures in Brighton Beach. I also remember that there were many murders around Brighton Beach with Ivankov's group taking over the area, they either told smaller brigades to join them up or to be eliminated. The group is still present nowdays in Brighton Beach, only Ivankov doesn't lead it anymore as he's dead.
In the start there were sayings that the Italian Mob was going to even kill Ivankov, due to that they didn't have experience with that kind of Russian Crime Group. They didn't realize they were much more powerful than Balagula's little gang of thugs.

I really have a lot of info in Russian about these all figures that are info about them in Russia, but sadly there's really less info about Russian criminals in USA in Russian.

From what I've read it seems that the big organized crime bosses in the Baltic states are mostly ethnic Russians. Latvia is also supposed to be very corrupt.

ThePolakVet, if you understand Russian, I can share some documentaries about Russian organized crime if you want. It would be interesting to discuss them.

In Latvia there are many type of Organized Crime Groups, majorly they are Russian crime groups with involvement of other ethnics in them as well. So, there are Russian, Chechen and Georgian groups that I know of. As well as some Gipsy, but they are mostly just drug dealers.

There are few Chechen groups, the largest one is known to be ran in Ventspils, there's no real info who is leading it, but it's very feared. Few years ago some members of this group beat up police officers in a club and the guards of the club were scared shitless that they didn't even interrupt that event. But in my opinion, the largest group is led by a businessman named Beslan Abdulmuslimov. He usually drives in a escort with several bodyguards around and has links to political parties.

The Georgian group is led by Zurab Shamugiya, he's the only Vor V Zakone in Latvia. They mainly operate in vehicle theft, by stealing cars and exporting them to Russia and as well in hi-jackings. There's no large information about them, and I don't really know if they're fully Georgian or just a majority of them.

There's a lot of Russian crime groups. The biggest in the 90's were Pardaugava Group, Kharitnov's Brigade, Liepaja Brigade and many other groups that are not known to the media. Currently most groups are paying off to Solnetsevskaya's obschak(the united fund collection of a criminal structure, usually held by one or few person's) There's also information on other smaller brigades that operates/-ed in Latvia, such as Burnov's Brigade that got ambushed by Pardaugava in a gym. Bolderaja Brigada which were known to be ruthless and usually extorted victims to the very core by taking fully everything they had. Kononov's Group that largely operated in contraband smuggling.

The most known current criminal bosses are Beslan Abdulmuslimov(Chechen), Zurab Shamugiya(Georgian), Boris Raigorodsky, Ivan Kharitonov, Raitis Kononov.

There are as well new groups, that for example operate in drug dealing, fuel stealing, contraband smuggling and many other activities, but they're small time and usually being extorted by larger groups.

There is really a lot more information to tell, but I'll finish it up later, currently got to study. Thanks for the questions guys, keep them coming. I'll make sure to post loads and load of information here, was really long time searching for such a forum.

Great information ThePolakVet

it seems like georgian, chechen and armenian crime groups have a disproportionate role in the russian underworld, am i right? a bit like sicilian calabrian and neapolitan in the italian underworld

Well in the entire former Soviet Union there are about 500000 Ashkenazi Jews, 2 million Chechens, 8 million Armenians, 5 million Georgians, 200000 Abkhazians, 150000 Yazidis, 4 million Kyrgyz, 10 million Azerbaijanis and Uzbeks are relatively bigger with a population of around 20 million.
But compare this to no less than 100 million ethnic Russians living in the former Soviet Union.
So yeah, you can definitely say that the other ethnic crime groups play a pretty disproportionate role in the underworld

Yeah, mainly there are Russian criminal groups, there's a concentration with other ethnic groups in Moscow as for them it's a pot of gold in the capital city where money goes around. But troughout Russia there's mainly Russian ethnic groups that have the major power.

What do you guys think about Monya Elson's claim he made shortly after John Gotti's death in an interview:
"I don't want to speak badly of the Italian mafia, but compared to what is now happening in the former Soviet Union, its boss is a nobody, both in terms of money and influence".
I mean, if he is talking about the USA territory, he is clearly lying, but what would happen if the Italian mafia and the Russian crime groups had a conflict on a neutral territory? Who would manage to push the other out?

If we're speaking about ex-USSR countries - The Russian Organized Crime groups are a superpower. And there's many things to clarify that.

Who are the members of ROC groups?
1. Majority are ex-sportsmen, who were boxers, other fighting sports specialists and so on. Young athletes who can beat people seriously up. Gym's were mass recruiting spots for the Russian Gangs in 90's and is even today. A lot of P.E.(Physical Education) teachers also became criminal gang members and even leaders as well in the 90's.
2. Ex military members. It's an obligatory to serve the army in Russia for every male at least a year. They know how to use weapons, army close combat fighting, tactics, etc.
3. Intelectuals - if in USA in prison everyone does sports, then in Russia they read books. Some people come out of prisons with education that even people with an university degree are idiots compared to them. A lot of Russians play chess, that already shows who you're dealing with. You're dealing with a crime group consisting of physically and intelectually very developed people. Like when Vory V Zakone were created in the Siberian Gulags, who you think got sent there mainly? People who were very smart and intelectual - people who would be a threat for the Soviet Regime to fall. Practically if you were at the time a guy with higher education in Engineering, you got sent to the Gulag. Who else got sent there? People who knew how to make money. As they were considered to the Soviet Regime as well as a threat who support capitalism. And nowday Russian gangsters are these people, the children of ex-convicts who were there because of their intelect or skills to earn money.

Look at the criminal activities. Like for example the fuel fraud scheme that brought in millions even in the 70's. Medicare fraud schemes. Specualtions with fund exchange. This is not the typical extortion, robbery thing. These criminals have higher rates, they go for the jackpot, the big cash. Like the B Girls in Miami, led by Alek(Oleg) Simchuk(actually an Ukrainian/Russian from Latvia). He didn't just organize an usual prostitute ring, he made prostitues to scam clients bigtime. Same with Ivankov, he didn't go there to take five thousand every week. He told straight to bring the three million.


I'm not here stating that Cosa Nostra members are idiots. But they aren't in the level of the Russian Mob, that's practicing upper-scale crimes.

In the 70's I guess the LCN would have easily taken out the Russian Mob as they were really small time back then. Nowdays the Russians would most probably have an upper hand in the conflict. But that's my opinion.

What I've heard is actually that a singer Villy Tokarev was tried to be extorted in USA by LCN mobsters, but as soon as they've heard that he is under Ivankov's protection they backed off.

Like ThePolakVet confirmed before : 'Russian' organized crime is divided in criminal gangs of a lot of different ethnicities. All of these gangs are very powerful.
Gangs like the Solntsevskaya ( mostly ethnic Russians and some Russian Jews) however are in a league of their own. They are capable of doing the drug trafficking and extortion most OC groups do, but they also carry out sophisticated schemes.
Right now Ex-Soviet OC is much more powerful than the American Mafia. But I wouldn't say they are more powerful than the Italy-based organizations like the Sicilian Mafia or the Ndrangheta. These two gangs also have a large and powerful international presence.
Worldwide I think Ex-Soviet OC, Italian OC and Triads are the most prevalent.

@The PolakVet

I agree with a lot of your statements and by the way, thanks for the info, it was a very interesting read. However I think that even you have a bit of a disillusioned view on the "Russian Mafiya". A prime example of what you called the Russian mob is that scam that was run by that Russian fraudster in Miami, Florida. It's a bit out of context to say that is Russian "Mafia" and the media blow these things way out of context, because to me a group of fraudsters running a scam is not the same as the word "Mafia" to me. If a bunch of Spanish fraudsters did that, they wouldn't get called "Mafia", it's bassically just re-enforcing stereotypes that Russian have a sense of criminality about them. When I think of Russian Mafia, I think of people like the Vor V Zakone and other criminal groups that have structure and are involved in a range of criminal activities. They are the real Russian organized crime groups, not petty one's that go about and commit medicare fraud. For example, Armenian Power, now that is a prime example of Esstern European organized crime. It is involved in many crimes, has structure and is international. In comparison to the well built structures of the Italian-American mafia, the Italians I think have the upper hand when it comes to man power and stability. Also you say that the Russian OC groups tend to be more involved in white collar crimes than the Italians, whilst that may be true to a certain extent, I can name several examples of the Italian and Italian-American mobsters getting involved in things like huge money laundering operations, Fraud e.t.c. and it's nothing new either, they have been doing it for quite some time.

@Antonio I got to agree with you, the whole thing of calling the Russian Crime Groups a Mafia is wrong, imo. We call them the Bratva - literally traslates to "a group of men", but practically describes any criminal structure which is from the ex-USSR, even if they're just three people. Practically in Russia and ex-USSR states we do not call our organized crime structures as a mafia, we call them bandits and criminals. The term of the "Red Mafiya" is more from the United States where they've made this trough stereotypes.

About the Miami fraudsters. Oleg Simchuk started this scam back in Riga, Latvia since the 90's. From my information sources he was also involved in extortion in his early career. But then turned to prostitution rings and fraud operations with them. He had at least seven strip club in Riga from which these operations were done, then he decided to move to USA where money would be a lot more.

Yeah, Italian Mafia may do money laundering, but everyone does that. Here in Latvia the latest fraud by the Bratva was done the 'income tax repayment scam'. We get paid a percent of our paid taxes each year when they recalculate them. So, this group made near to hundred non-existing companies, in Latvia and abroad. They made several deals that did not happen between these companies and their total jackpot in the end was around six million. They were filtrating the money trough these off-shore companies as well so there would be no trace, but yeah in the end they got caught. But somehow all the arrested people involved in this scheme have been released already.

While I'm here having a bit of free time, I'll explain to the people what's Vory V Zakone and their difference from other criminal structures in ex-USSR.

So, the group Vory V Zakone is more or less to have been made in the early thirties in the Siberian Gulags. Practically there is no trace who were the very first to create this group, but what is known that it was a group of criminals to hold together the traditions of Russia's criminals. They made a special code to which they had to follow. The main thing was to oppose the communist regime and not go by it, as they wanted the Vory V Zakone to work.

Here's the code(Vorovskoi Zakon):
First part, there's practically seven main laws to follow:
1) Represent and support the Vorovskoi ideology.
2) Do not contact or get in any cooperation with goverment organs.
3) Be honest between each other(meant between Vory V Zakone)
4) Recruit new members to the Vorovskoi mir, especially those who are young.
5) Not to be involved in any politics.
6) Organize discipline/order in prisons and create there the ruling of Vory V Zakone.
7) Obligatory knowledge how to play card games.

Then from these 7 laws, there goes out more laws:
1) Disagree to work with/for any goverment workers(prison guards/police/etc.)
2) Never give a testimony.
3) Never accept your own fault in a crime you've done.
4) Not to hold any funds or stock(stock market)
5) Not to have family(no wife, no children)
6) From time to time, you need to get in prison
7) Not to take weapons in your hands(meant to not accept the offer from Stalin to become soldiers)
8) Not work at all
9) Hold order in prison, as sort conflicts and not let a conflict to break out
10) Send received packages to isolators
11) Recruit every possible criminal, prisoner as new recruits in the prison
12) Respect your parents(especially mother)
13) Not to be a member of some political party
14) Teach the new trade the right way of the life
15) Not to have signed at a living place(means you don't have an actual living place)
16) A card game always must be honestly played without cheating
17) Not allowed to swear
18) Not allowed to revenge in a sneaky way
19) Not to rob from your own people
20) Not to harm/laugh at other men
And then there's the other laws, that directly are meant to work in the prison:
1) Give a piece of your income(packages you receive/food/money) in the obshak(fund handler)
2) Not to raise your hand at a Vor V Zakone
3) Listen to/respect elders
4) Not to become a communist
Plus there goes other laws from previous sections mentioned.

A vor v zakone is a man who has sat in prison for a crime that is not(rape/pedophilia/killing of child) and has been crowned as a Vor V Zakone by another Vor V Zakone. They usually take leadership positions in organized crime groups, a lot of them are not even after that connected to organized crime. Their main task is to support criminals in the Russian prison system.

However, now there are always more and more vory v zakone who just buy the title, the so-called "oranges" (apelsiny), and there are some who did commit the "forbidden" crimes: for example, Vladimir Tiurin has been convicted for rape, as well as Otari Kvantrishvili (killed in the 90s), while Yevgeniy Yevseyev from Kemerovo (also killed) once had a small child murdered by mistake - his hit men went to kill the gangster Vladimir Dureyev, but got drunk before doing the job, entered the wrong apartment and slaughtered the family who lived there.

Yeah, as Dawlin2011 stated there's also a lot of those who buy the title nowdays. The whole ideology has changed a lot as well in nowdays, it's more business/money oriented. Such as Vory V Zakone having properties, families, children.

That's also for a lot of groups nodays to dismiss the influence of Vory V Zakone and take them as any other criminal, not an elite criminal.

I heard that pedophiles have tough times in Russian prisons lol

They try to put them together in some prisons together with other sexual crime related inmates, but mostly they're left in the zona together with everyone else - they either get used as prison whores themselves or get killed eventually.

I always wondered about one thing: while sexual offenders and those who get raped in prisons are considered the lowest category, those who rape them aren't despised at all. That makes no sense to me: if one has sexual contact with a child molester, he is a pervert himself.
By the way, a curiosity: I read that the the bosses of the "Uralmash" organization in Yekaterinburg created during the 90s a special group (the so-called "Kurdiumov brigade") composed mainly of so-caled "cocks" or "roosters", former prisoners who have been sexually abused. This group was used by the Uralmash by exploiting their hatred towards the gangsters who belonged to the same criminal category as those who had abused them.

From one side it's like giving them what they did to others, from another aspect I prefer the thing thay they kill them. Practically lately in Latvian prisons child molesters/killers have hanged themselves, but I think that they actually got hanged there by other prisoners. But on the other side then, they get with an easy punishment away. However, better them to be dead not to be alive and ruining someone's life.

@ThePolakVet

Do Moldovans have major organized crime networks ?

I've heard they operate in contraband smuggling, never heard of any actual Moldovian organized crime group. Mostly if there are Moldovian criminals, they're associated witn Russian groups.

This thread has gone down the drain, maybe anyone got some questions?

Is Russian oc in USA powerful?

they do that [seperate them] in all prisons.it is customary to put sex offenders in a seperate wing all together. very common practice has been going on since [at least] the late eightys.

In Scottish prisons sex offenders are always seperated from the general populations as you said. In England though it doesn't seem to always be the case last year in one Englands most secure prisons (Frankland) this happened -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...son-attack.html

Polakvets answer will be more useful but here's an article related to you question anyway -

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hockey/mafia/csis.html

I think they are very powerful, due to the membership they have and the skills and everything. Well not all groups are like that, but there are definetely a lot of them. They play a major role nowday in USA's criminal society.

So, what I know from my own information what people from Latvia who have lived in USA has told. It is that in USA when Russian groups started to base themselves in the early 90's, a lot of black and mexican gangs had to back up out of their controled areas. Russian groups are known to be violent and professional in what they do. For example most of the Russian criminals have served in the Soviet and later Russian Federation army. Most of them are sportsmen, majorly specializing in fighting sports, such as boxing, wrestling, etc.

But by activities, look at Brighton Beach for example. Yaponchik led the group there really organized. The place is clean from black/mexican gangs. Medicare fraud is also a big common thing, various scams as well. When Russians do it, they do it big. They don't tend on going to extort the local grocery shop owner for five hundred dollars a month, that's like nothing. They better create some big scheme and gain millions out of it. That's what the smart one's do, but there are as well the stupid groups, which get into robberies and such shit as any other small time group.

What I've heard also, that if someone like tries to harm you at a club in New York, you just need to start swearing at them in Russian and they'll back off :D:D

But yeah, generally in my opinion they are powerful, a big key member in the criminal world of USA.

Is there a difference between the groups who mostly do white collar crime like frauds and the groups who do the violent crime like drug and weapon trafficking and extortion,etc...
I know that the Russian groups from Agron and Balagula were largely involved in violent crime, even home invasions and robberies.