Turkish OC is far more widespread than people realize. I know they run A LOT of the underground operations in Rochester, which used to be a huge LCN town. Turkish groups are taking over in North America.
Really ? That seems very strange to me since I've never read about Turkish organized crime groups operating in the US . I suppose they are very careful in the way they conduct business , but it's still strange that I've never read about busts involving Turkish gangsters in the US .
What sort of rackets are they into in Rochester by the way ?
Oh absolutely. You'd be surprised but like Hollander said, there are a lot of 1st and 2nd generation Turkish immigrants living in New York State, specifically NYC and Rochester. There was a large conviction in Rochester a few years ago that broke up a long operating organized crime ring that was originally was set up decades ago. This local Turkish mob group was headed by one Ersin Yaman, known on the streets as "Mike the Turk." He has connections to the now defunct Rochester Crime Famiy of La Cosa Nostra. A big player in the modern OC era. Anyway, the Feds busted his organized crime ring which was funded primarily by stolen credit cards and stolen goods out of various pawn shops in Rochester. They handed out a string of indictments with about 55 different charges including burglary, grand larceny, forgery, drug possession, possession of stolen property, intimidating a victim/witness and the first ever charge of enterprise corruption in county history against multiple guys. Two other Turks in the gang arrested were Vedat Kıraç and Muhittin Akyüz. Another Ismael "Junior" Cruz served as Yaman's second in command. Evidently, they were making in excess of $25 million. I understand that other Turkish mafia operations still exist in the city. I don't want to say too much because honestly I don't know anything for certain, but hearsay says there are other underground activities the Turks control and a heavy flow of money they're taking huge pieces of. I suspect much of it involves dirty money and several business in the area are known to be fronts for Turkish mafia operations.
I know other similar cases have been busted in Long Island (specifically Suffolk County) involving Turkish OC and stolen credit cards, extortion, illegal gambling and drugs. There was a case in which credit card information was stolen from gas station pumps in the NYC metro area and a few million ended up in offshore accounts. Another scheme involved bloating the credit limits of students and sending the money back to Bursa, Turkey. They're pretty heavy into heroin trafficking too and I believe much of that goes through the NY/NJ seaport.
