Russian Organized Crime

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Russian Organized Crime (ROC)

The term "Russian organized crime" (ROC) refers to criminal groups from the 15 republics which comprised the former Soviet Union. ROC has existed for 20 years in the United States but during the last five years law enforcement authorities have observed a distinct increase in their criminal activities. Criminals from the former Soviet Union have established their networks in major cities and are also emerging in some smaller cities. ROC groups are involved in murder, money laundering, extortion, auto theft, weapons smuggling, narcotics trafficking, prostitution, counterfeiting currency, and a multitude of complex fraud schemes.

ROC in the United States evolved in Brighton Beach, New York, which at one time was a small Russian immigrant community. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, the Soviet government liberalized its immigration policy which allowed its citizens to immigrate and travel freely. Approximately 200,000 Soviet citizens immigrated to the United States to escape religious persecution which they had endured during the 70 years of communist rule. It was during this time that many Soviet criminals came to the United States under the guise of fleeing this religious oppression. Additionally, some United States government officials suspect that the KGB emptied their prisons of hard-core criminals much like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro did during the Mariel boat-lift in 1980.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Russian criminals and organized crime figures fled to the United States. By 1992, Russian authorities had alerted U.S. law enforcement officials of the arrival in New York of Vyatcheslav Ivankov, identified as a leader of the "Thieves in Law," which is a tra...

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Francis A. J. Ianni, A Family Business, 1972.

Thomas E. Dewey, Twenty against the Underworld, 1974.

Alan Block and William Chambliss, Organizing Crime, 1981.

President’s Commission on Organized Crime , The Impact: Organized Crime Today (Report to the President and the Attorney General), 1986.

Stephen Fox, Blood and Power, 1989.

G. Robert Blakey, “RICO: The Federal Experience (Criminal and Civil) and an Analysis of Attacks against the Statute ,” in Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States (Robert J. Kelly et al., eds.), 1994.

Michael Maltz, “Defining Organized Crime ,” in Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States (Robert J. Kelly et al., eds.), 1994.

Rufus Schatzberg and Robert J. Kelly, African-American Organized Crime, 1997.

James B. Jacobs, Gotham Unbound, 1999.

Robert J. Kelly, The Upperworld and the Underworld, 1999.

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