By 1970s the US allowed Soviet Jews to immigrant to the states, which many members forged their documents to get in. This led to an influx of members in Brighton Beach, and allowed a few bigger groups to operate and not kick anything up to the
Yes. Every Soviet citizen had to carry an internal passport that listed their "republic of national origin" (i.e., Ukraine, Azerbaijan, etc.). But Jews carried passports that said "Jew." This went back to Stalin's anti-Semitism--he regarded Jews as "rootless cosmopolitans." Russian OC forged "Jew" passports so they could leave the USSR under the US Jackson/Vanik Act, which linked favorable trade treatment for the USSR in return for USSR letting Jews emigrate. Most of the so-called "Jewish Mafia" in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, were non-Jewish Russian OC members who got in on phony papers.
The biggest laugh was Marat Balagula. "Marat" is not a common Jewish surname. "Balagula" stems from a Hebrew phrase--"B'al Agula" or "master of the wheel," a carter, which was a respectable trade in Biblical times. But, in Eastern European slang it became "balagula"--an uncouth person, specifically a gangster or thug. That's how "Marat the Gangster" got into the US as a "Jewish refugee."
