Originally Posted by 2a
Originally Posted by TheKillingJoke
Originally Posted by 2a


Yup the Solntsevskaya isn't a centralized organization at all , but neither are many ( if not most ) " mafia style " groups and I don't think it's much of a stretch to state that groups like the Solntsevskaya Bratva are comparable to ( say ) LCN . After all both groups have been known to engage in more sophisticated rackets ( like higher level fraud ) than the two Russian groups that got busted recently and I'm pretty sure that the Solntsevskaya Bratva has a dispute resolution committee like the Commission as well .



Truth be told, there isn't really a lot of reliable information available about the Bratvas. Sometimes I doubt if such thing as the "Solntsevskaya Bratva" really is as huge as we've been led to believe.
Organized crime within ethnic communities is always going to involve blue collar crime so I definitely think this is still a major source of income for the Russian groups. High level fraud isn't something many are capable enough of involving themselves in to. Most Russian (and by expansion other former Soviet Union) crews are gonna stick to black market fuel rackets and credit card schemes when it comes to fraud. You don't have to be a brainiac to pull them off and they're lucrative enough.

I think the two "Russian" groups that got busted most recently - which was actually one "Russian" (as in Slavic and Jewish thugs) crew and one Georgian crew - are a reasonably representative face of Eurasian OC. They might have seemed small compared to the "Russian Mafia Superpower" stories the media have been trying to feed us (which is a crock of bullshit if you ask me), but the rackets they were involved in were bountiful and they still made quite a bit of money.


Yup the Shulaya crew in particular must have made a killing from contraband cigarettes , if what was listed in the indictment is to be believed .


Fuel tax fraud seems to be going out of style though . Neither of the two indictments mentioned it and I'm not aware of any Russian/FSU group getting nabbed for it since ( roughly ) 2010 .





Yeah, the heydays of that scam were in the late 80's up to the mid 90's. I'm sure it still happens on a slightly smaller and more hidden scale. The Armenians on the West Coast are reputedly still involved in it. Scams involving prescription drugs seem to be more into style for Eurasian groups nowadays though.