death by hot potato

San Diego

Great location. On the Pacific Ocean. Home to a US Naval Base. Next to the Mexican border.

Another great location for organized crime.

1996: Russian Mafia Invades California, by Wayne Lutton

Russian gangsters - many of whom entered the United States as "refugees" -- have spread their influence beyond the East Coast and are becoming a major criminal presence in California, according to State Attorney General Dan Lungren....The California Attorney General's Office report notes that during the 1970s and 1980s, under the guise of the Russian-Jewish refugee program, "the KGB emptied their prisons of hard-core criminals, much like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro did during the Mariel boatlift of 1980." The 1989 Lautenberg Amendment expanded refugee admissions from the Soviet Union to up to 50,000 per year. This was followed, in 1991, by provisions for legal immigration from the now independent states of the former USSR. Dubbed by Russian criminals as "the big store," the United States is now home to criminal gangs from all 15 republics. Since the mid-1970s, the hub of Russian organized crime in the U.S. has been the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, New York, known as "Little Odessa." From this center of emigre activity, they have spread their operations throughout greater New York, to Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, and Seattle. California is particularly vulnerable to Russian organized crime because only New York state has a larger population of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. These new crime groups have been identified in major California cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. They maintain ties to criminal organizations back in Russia and are forging working agreements with other Latin American and Asian syndicates.

Frank Lautenberg is a Jewish Democratic Senator from New Jersey. The Lautenberg Amendment made special provisions to allow Jewish and Evangelical refugees to resettle in the US from the former Soviet Union, because Congress declared these groups "persecuted." The refugees don't need to show actual persecution to avail themselves of the special privileges. For more background, see this link.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Lautenberg Amendment, celebrating the fact that over 440,000 "refugees" have resettled in the United States from the FSU and elsewhere as a result of this legislation, which Congress renews each year.

By 2000, the "Russian" mafia had already been well established across the United States.

COINCIDENCE?

May 2000, Go West, Young Comrade: The Russian Mob in America, by John William Touhy

According to the FBI, there are over 200 Russian mobs operating in American, in at least 17 cities in 14 states. At least four of those groups operate in California alone, with interests in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. These groups have linked with Russian organizations in New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, and Oregon to form an enormous criminal syndicate.

But officials were not too worried because supposedly the "Russian" mafia was not that organized. Famous last words.

Although, the government is quick to point out, and US authorities agree, that only about 300 of those gangs have some sort identifiable structure. However, some Russian mob experts argue that the government is wrong, that the Russian-based mobs, are, in fact, very organized, and only appear to have no structure, a tool they use to minimize contact within the organization for security purposes and to throw investigators off their trail.
Lose or not, the structure of these organizations on both sides of the Atlantic remains basically the same. Each group is led by a boss, called a "pa khan," who controls four criminal groups, or cells within the organization, although, like the American Mafia, the Pakhan has only minimal contact with the men under him. Instead, he uses an intermediary called a "brigadier." In turn, the brigadier is watched over by two spies to ensure loyalty and to make sure he doesn't get too much power within the organization.

So the cells report to a brigadier, who reports to the Pakhan, who has spies on the brigadier. At least that's how it supposedly worked in 2000. The street criminal normally does not know who his boss is.

Some people know today that all the top "Russian" mobsters have Israeli passports. However, the FBI has known this for a long time.

In general, Friedman writes, state and federal law enforcement agencies were loath to go after Russian mobsters, instead devoting their energies to bagging Italian wiseguys, a traditional route to promotion. And because the Russian mob was mostly Jewish, it was a political hot potato, especially in the New York area, where the vast majority of refugees were being resettled by Jewish welfare  agencies.

As for the FBI, which has the resources and the legal authority to investigate the Russian mob, Friedman says that were it not for the bureau's "own sluggishness in addressing the problem, the Russian mob in  the United States would never have become as powerful as it is today."  It wasn't until 1994 that the bureau set up a special force to deal with Russian organized crime. By then, Friedman says, there were some five  thousand "hard-core Russian criminals" in the New York region. Yet the FBI's spokesman in New York, Joe Valiquette, told Friedman, "The Russian Mafia has the lowest priority on the criminal pecking order."

To be clear, the article says that by 1994: 1) there were already some five thousand hard-core Russian criminals in New York; 2) and this mafia was the lowest priority on the FBI's pecking order; 3) because the fed and state agencies feared to go after them; 4) because the Russian mob is mostly Jewish.

So it was a "hot potato." So nobody touched it.

Recently, Jonathan Winer, a former senior United States government official, provided a rare view of how federal authorities bungled a major investigation into the Russian money laundering involving the Bank of New York. Winer was deputy assistant secretary of state for international law  enforcement; his job was to find ways to work with other nations to curtail money laundering and international crime. After Friedman's book was published, Winer told a congressional committee that he was first alerted  to the Bank of New York's large-scale money-laundering operation by the Manhattan District Attorney's office in March 1999. When he learned more, six months later, it was still not from anyone in the United States  government, but from British officials, who were keeping an eye on Mogilevich. From the British, Winer learned that in eight thousand transactions during eighteen months $4.2 billion had been moved through a suspicious account at the bank-an average of one wire transfer every five minutes, twenty-four  hours a day. But this was not enough to make anyone suspicious, apparently. The transactions were handled by a small company called Benex, which turned  out to be the creation of an officer at the Bank of New York, Lucy Edwards, and her husband, Peter Berlin.

Nothing happened to Lucy Edwards and Peter Berlin, or the Bank of New York.

Unlike the latter scandals involving Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom and Tyco, not a single one of BoNY’s top echelon has been indicted or convicted. Even the scandal’s "superstars", Lucy Edwards and her husband Peter Berlin, who pleaded guilty to money laundering, immigration fraud and other grave federal crimes in February of 2000 have never been sentenced and never spent any time in prison.

The scandal revealed Washington's "dangerous reluctance to confront international criminal networks."



No shit. That was ten years ago.

Also ten years ago, the Jerusalem Post admitted that the Israeli underworld had been taken over by Russian-Jewish mob bosses.

“Tarzan” Fainberg’s drug, weapons and slave trade with Tel Aviv, Kiev and St. Petersburg, in recent years, began using the comparatively free US-Canadian border for his transactions, financing the relatively new Toronto marijuana and cocaine fad. He was recently arrested by Canadian police and, without explanation, deported to Israel where he will continue his operations without interference. He apparently travels from Miami to Tel Aviv unhindered, and he brags that he has “ties” with the American FBI.

Hence, the Russian Jewish mafia is a “smoking gun” case linking American intelligence to international drugs and slavery, along with the Israeli government. At the same time, it also links these entities to the “Arab terror” groups operating throughout the world, who are the Israeli mafia’s top arms clients. In other words, it is not out of the question that the mafia ties the entire Anglo-Israeli complex
together, linking the sexual revolution, pornography, weapons, slaves and drugs together with the apparent cooperation of the American FBI and the Israeli police services.

FACT: The FBI still has Osama bin Laden on its ten most wanted list. Along with Semion Mogilevich. And Whitey Bulger. We don't expect any of them to be brought in anytime soon, meaning ever.