Russian mafia taking over French Riviera

Mafia kingpins from the former Soviet Union have moved into the French Riviera and are taking over with “quasi-military” precision. 

Their grip on the region is now so tight that Riviera detectives expect an eastern connection to almost every crime.

“Everything from burglary and money laundering to vice is controlled by the Mob from former Communist countries,” said one police officer, who was involved in the arrest of 69 members of a Georgian syndicate in March. 

 Full Story (Telegraph)

In a Very Cold Case Finally at Trial, a Subtext of Russian Mobsters

In the Eastern European immigrant neighborhoods of South Brooklyn, where the notorious heroin smuggler Boris Nayfeld was running the Brighton Beach waterfront, the collapsing Soviet bloc had opened new routes for money laundering. The crime syndicates of the early 1990s began to expand their ambitions beyond extortion and racketeering toward increasingly complex financial fraud.

Among the strivers and the hustlers, the thieves and the aspiring gangsters, were four Ukrainian men, none much older than 21, who roamed the billiard halls and the boardwalks as a crew seeking to impress Mr. Nayfeld, prosecutors have said.

One of the men, Boris Roitman, 21, did not survive the summer of 1992. He was killed by two shotgun blasts delivered in an alley beside a tennis court. The first slug obliterated his heart. His killing went unsolved for more than a decade.

Russian mafia blamed for sex, drug charges

IT'S A CASE with all the ingredients of a John le Carre novel -- allegations of a drug-soaked liaison between a high-placed diplomat and a pair of young men that leads to his dispatch back to Moscow, a slew of criminal charges and claims of "dirty tricks" from the Russian mafia.

Mafia boss wanted in Spain arrested in Dubai

MADRID — The boss of a Russian mafia gang wanted in Spain in connection with a multi-million euro money laundering scam has been arrested in Dubai.

Zuhar Knuyazevich Kalashov was arrested as he left a party held by other Russian mafia leaders in the Gulf city.

Kalashov, whose gang is based in Barcelona, is facing extradition to Spain in connection with allegations of laundering millions through Spanish property interests.

In June last year, Spanish police arrested 30 people, most of them Russian or Eastern European gang members, in an operation codenamed Wasp.

The operation to arrest Kalashov was led by Spanish police working with Interpol and the Emirates
authorities.

Russian mafia sets up shop

RUSSIAN gangsters, including ex-KGB agents, have infiltrated Australia, establishing extortion, gun-running and prostitution rackets, Australian Federal Police say.

They are involved in fraud, drugs and blackmail, according to an AFP and Australian Crime Commission report obtained by The Sunday Telegraph.

Renowned for their audacity and efficiency, Russian criminals have established a foothold in Australia, the report reveals.

Some of those involved were once members of the KGB, where they learned skills such as debugging, computer hacking and strategic recruitment.

Their activities in Australia are centred on Sydney, especially Bondi, and the Gold Coast.

The Dorset public school girl, the Russian mafia and a £300,000 bank account

An 18-year-old pupil at a girls' boarding school was found with £300,000 in her bank account - money suspected of being at the centre of a Russian mafia laundering operation.

Tamara Platash, who took her A-levels at Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset this year, aroused suspicions at her local bank branch when she tried to transfer £200,000 to an account in China.

	Tamara Platash tried to transfer £200,000

The bank alerted police who blocked the transfer and started an investigation. A total of £303,730.21 in the account has since been frozen.

Officers arrested Russian-born Miss Platash at the school and took her away for questioning. Her mother, Irina, a businesswoman, was arrested when she came over to England for the school's prize-giving ceremony at the end of term.

Police suspect that the money was the proceeds of Russian mafia crime in Britain or was being forwarded for use in criminal activities abroad.

The Crown Prosecution Service ruled that there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution against the Platashes and they were released without charge. But the £300,000 has been frozen by the Government's Assets Recovery Agency, which will now attempt to confiscate the money through the High Court.

The case has embarrassed staff at the 106-year-old Sherborne School for Girls, which, with fees of £20,000 a year, has 350 boarding pupils aged 11 to 18. The school, according to its prospectus, "honours the timeless traditions of honesty and integrity".

International drug mafia more active on Tajik-Russian thoroughfares

MOSCOW, August 19 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Interior Ministry is concerned over the international drug mafia's growing activity on Russia and Tajik thoroughfares, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Friday.

"Of special concern is the deteriorating criminal situation on transport linking Tajikistan and Russia," Nurgaliyev said at a joint Interior Ministry session.

According to ministry data, in 2004 and the first six months of 2005, more than 100kg of illicit drugs were confiscated in trains, cars and aircraft in Russia. Drug couriers were detained for heroin transportation.

Tajik Interior Minister Khumdin Sharipov said a high yield of raw opium had been gathered in Afghanistan in 2004, which could be "used to produce some 400 metric tons of heroin."

Nurgaliyev said 145,000 people suspected of committing grave crimes and "some 2,000 criminals are being searched for by Tajik law enforcement agencies."

Moscow Court Acquits Russian Mafia Boss Ivankov

Moscow City Court has acquitted Vyacheslav Ivankov, a notorious Russian mafia boss charged with the murder of two Turkish citizens.

On Monday, the court of jury found Ivankov not guilty of the murder. Prosecutors have said they will appeal the verdict in Russia’s Supreme Court. The acting Moscow prosecutor, Vladimir Bakun, said on Tuesday the jurors were biased because seven of them either had previous convictions, or had relatives who were taken to court.

According to the investigators, Ivankov and another notorious criminal known by the nickname of Sliva (Plum) killed the Turkish citizens in a Moscow restaurant in 1992. One of them died at the scene and the other later at a hospital.

In 2000, Moscow prosecutors charged Ivankov with the murders in his absence; he was in the United States at the time. On July 15, 2004, soon after his deportation from the United States, he was charged with the murders again.

Ivankov also known as Yaponchik (Little Japanese) had already become notorious for creating the Solntsevskaya criminal organization in Russia in 1980. In 1982 he was imprisoned on robbery charges. After arriving in the United States he ran the Russian mafia throughout the country and reportedly became the highest-ranking Russian criminal in the United States.

He was arrested in New York in 1995 on charges of organizing a sham marriage and supervising the extortion of several million dollars from an investment firm. The courts indicted him after a two-year investigation and sentenced him to nine years and seven months in prison. He was going to be released early for good behavior, but his sentence was extended after a fight with another inmate thought to be a deliberate provocation.

Ivankov was extradited to Russia on July 11, 2004.

How webs of scammers pull off Internet fraud

Explanations about the source of the Internet's phishing epidemic often involve exotic tales of Asian gangs or the Russian Mafia. It turns out, though, that your average phisher is much more likely to be someone like "C-Power," who is probably a teenager somewhere overseas with a computer in his bedroom and a lot of alarming friends in his buddy lists.

Spanish sting operation nets top echelon of eastern European mafia bosses

MADRID (AFP) - Spanish police have rounded up at least 22 top mafia bosses from countries of the former Soviet Union in a sting operation that has dealt an enormous blow to organized crime, said the Spanish interior ministry.

The sting, known as "Operation Wasp," was launched last week on the Spanish Mediterranean coast against the ever-growing presence of mafia groups, mostly from Georgia, specialized in money laundering.

Four hundred agents were deployed in 11 regions reaching from Catalonia to the Costa del Sol and Alicante, and were assisted by information from Interpol, Europol and the Belgian, French, Israeli, Russian and US police.

Accused Russian Mafia member sentenced to jail for scam here

A suspected member of the infamous Russian Mafia likely will spend nine months in jail for an insurance scam orchestrated here.

Gyorgy Kovacs told a judge and prosecutors Wednesday that he wants nothing more than to return to his homeland of Hungary.

But, Waynesboro Circuit Judge Humes J. Franklin wants to keep tabs on the alleged mafia man for a little while, and doled out a 1½-year sentence. Kovacs, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y., already has spent nine months in jail awaiting trial and sentencing, however.

“If he’s going to stay in this country, I want to know what he’s doing because I don’t believe for a minute this was an innocent scheme,” Franklin said Wednesday.

Franklin declared Kovacs guilty three months ago of falsifying his driver’s license as well as two counts of falsifying an application for a car title at the local DMV office.

Investigators suspect that Kovacs and other New York mobsters targeted the Hopeman Parkway DMV to falsify licenses and other paperwork.

Among the two cars Kovacs falsely registered here was a 1981 Lincoln Town Car that was bombed in New York.

How the insurance scheme worked remains a mystery to authorities, as does why the Russian Mafia picked the Waynesboro DMV in the first place.

Though the FBI and New York Police are investigating other ties to the scheme, Kovacs’ trial is the only Virginia link that authorities have uncovered.

“I’d like to travel back to my home country,” Kovacs told Franklin. “I’m very sorry about the whole thing, and I’d like to go home.”

FBI Searches New Melones Reservoir in Russian Mafia Case

FBI investigators are at New Melones Reservoir supervising divers as they search for evidence in a three-year-old case with possible connections to Russian organized crime. According to a statement issued by the FBI, the divers are searching the chilly waters for evidence relating to the kidnap and murder of five Los Angeles residents whose bodies were recovered from the reservoir in March 2002. A spokesperson for the agency said the search would take several days. However, the bureau would neither confirm nor deny divers were looking for more bodies and gave no indication what else they might be searching for. Four men were indicted in March 2002 in connection with the crimes. The indictment alleges Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were involved in the kidnappings. Petro Krylov and Ainar Altmanis are accused of aiding and abetting the crimes. Prosecutors announced last year they are seeking the death penalty against Mikhel, Kadamovas, and Krylov. Prosecutors said they had uncovered evidence that Mikhel and Kadamovas had committed similar murders in Turkey and Cyprus. Two other defendants in the case, Aleksejus Markovskis and Natalya Solovyeva, will not face the death penalty but could be sentenced to life prison if convicted.

Everett woman says Russian Mafia is after her
EVERETT, Wash. -- The woman who crashed her car through the security gate at the Snohomish County Jail in Everett says the Russian mafia is after her.

Fifty-six-year-old Lynn Francis Johnson of Edmonds sought refuge Sunday and asked to be placed in protective custody.

She has been charged with first-degree malicious mischief and is held in the jail with bail set at ten-thousand dollars. She has no previous criminal record and would face no more than 90 days in jail.

Deputy Prosecutor Chris Dickinson says Johnson said she was the leader of the Mexican mafia and the Russian mafia was out the kill her.