NEW YORK CITY
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Federal officials arrested 31 members and associates of Russian crime syndicate for racketeering, extortion, robbery, murder-for-hire conspiracy, fraud, narcotics and firearms charges, officials stated.
“The suspects, in this case, cast a wide net of criminal activity, aiming to make as much money as possible, all allegedly organized and run by a man who promised to protect them,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said. “But that protection didn’t include escaping justice and being arrested by the agents and detectives on the FBI New York Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force. Our partnerships with other FBI field offices, the NYPD and CBP allows us to do everything we can to go after criminals who don’t believe the law applies to them.”
According to the indictment released by federal authorities, the criminal allegations included:
- The operation of illicit poker businesses in Brighton Beach
- The extortion of gamblers who became indebted to the Shulaya Enterprise
- Attempts to extort local business owners
- Efforts to defraud casinos in Atlantic City and Philadelphia by using electronic devices and computer servers to predict and exploit the behavior of electronic slot machines
- The theft of cargo shipments, including a shipment containing approximately 10,000 pounds of chocolate confections
- The use of a female member of the Shulaya Enterprise to seduce men, incapacitate them with gas, and then rob them
- Attempts to create an after-hours nightclub that would host, among other things, the sale of narcotics
- The transportation and sale of numerous cases of untaxed cigarettes
- Plans to pay bribes to local law enforcement
- Creation and use of forged identification documents, checks, and invoices
Many of them, according to the indictment, were based in New York City but others operated in Florida, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania and abroad. They were mostly from the former Soviet Union, and many had strong ties to Georgia, Ukraine and Russia.
To read the U.S. Department of Justice press release along with the indictments click here: DOJ