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Experts: Russian Mob Disorganized
March 29, 2002
By PAUL WILBORN

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Five Los Angeles residents vanish over a span of six months. Faxes from Russia demand millions in ransom, and one desperate family wires $200,000 to various banks.

All five turn up dead, bound and dumped in a Sierra foothills reservoir.

Authorities said the kidnappings were part of a Russian organized crime plot, and they have arrested six Russian men as suspects.

But as ruthlessly efficient as the crime might appear, experts and federal authorities say violence is rare for America's Russian mob. They also say the criminals are nothing like La Cosa Nostra or the drug cartels south of the border.

The alleged kidnappers even left a credit card and money trail investigators could follow, prompting a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office to refer to them as ``knuckleheads.''

``The truth is, Russian organized crime just isn't that organized,'' said William Callahan, a former federal prosecutor who now runs an international security company in New York. ``They are clannish and thuggish, but they have never developed the organization of the old Italian Mafia.''

What passes for the Russian mob in America is believed to be hundreds or thousands of small criminal enterprises, connected by blood, religion, ethnicity or expediency. They are a growing presence in the burgeoning Eastern European immigrant communities in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Toronto and Portland, said Louise Shelley, an expert on international crime at American University.

Experts say most Russian-speaking criminals are clever opportunists who grew up in a society where scamming the government was a way of survival. They prefer fraud over kidnapping, deceit over muscle.

``We haven't run across a lot of stuff that has been heinous and bloody,'' said Larry Cho, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who specializes in organized crime. ``If you can make millions defrauding the government why get your hands dirty?''

The most popular scams for Russians are gas tax frauds, in which dummy companies sell fuel below market value and never pay the fuel excise taxes. Insurance scams, often involving faked auto accidents, are another favorite.

``They are intelligent people and they come over here and see all these programs are offered by the country and the state. And they see these programs aren't policed well, and they just jump in with both feet,'' said Lt. Dan Hooper of the Los Angeles Police Department's organized crime and vice division.

A Medicaid scam in Los Angeles in 1996 brought in millions before authorities broke it up. One group recently scammed a small fortune in nickels from California's recycling reimbursement program.

Less sophisticated mobsters resort to old-fashioned shakedowns for protection money in the ethnic neighborhoods of Hollywood and New York's Brighton Beach.

Along with fraud and shakedowns, Russian-speaking criminals are branching out into the vices. Some crime groups are using false documents to smuggle eastern European women into the country, then setting them up as prostitutes.

``They are really good at forgery and fraudulent production of immigration documents,'' Hooper said.

Which is why the recent murders stand out.

The bodies were found in New Melones Lake near Sacramento between October and last week. Federal prosecutors said all five were abducted, blackmailed and killed by Russian mobsters.

The six men in custody are charged with hostage-taking or receiving ransom money. More than $5.5 million in ransom was demanded of relatives, and the kidnappers managed to persuade one family to wire more than $200,000 to banks in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Four of the five victims were from the Russian immigrant community, Hooper said.

In Los Angeles, the Russian-speaking community has grown to almost 500,000, centered in Hollywood, West Hollywood and Glendale.

Yurik and Ruzanna Beloshitski, recent immigrants to Hollywood, said it's too bad the criminals followed the good people to America.

``America is a magic land,'' Ruzanna said, as the Russian couple paused along the Walk of Fame. ``But a lot of people come to make a mess here.''