Organizational structure and principles

Organized Crime

It may not seem that Southern California would be a hotbed for Russian-led organized crime, but it has become so over the past two decades. Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was eager to embrace capitalism, but this did not always mean that the forces behind the movement were law-abiding. In that time of transition, many different organized crime groups emerged, and they merged with those already established on the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Within the last 20 years these groups have been steadily increasing their influence in other parts of the United States as they see opportunity grow with better technology and more access to information. This paper discusses present location of the group, its activities and why it is important to expose the crime to research.

Southern California includes everything from the Mexican border to the Tehachpis Mountains north of Los Angeles. However, when people think of the region their first thought is usually of Los Angeles (even though San Diego is much more Southern). The Russian mob has had an organization in Los Angeles since approximately 1990, but it has been even more prevalent in the past decade.

The organization is involved in every type of traditional (from the standpoint of the Sicilian gangsters of book and movie lore) activity from prostitution rings to drugs. But, they have branched, more recently, into identity theft and other types of computer-associated crime. One of the largest of these was a credit card fraud ring that was caught and prosecuted in 1995 (CADOJ, 1996). However, they have also been involved in local fuel and medical insurance fraud, and immigration fraud.

The group can be called an organized crime unit because it adheres to many of the principles discussed as defining organized crime. The group is made up of a recognized ethnic group that attempts to earn money through criminal activity, and has a recognized hierarchical structure. The group is not a "family" per se, and it is not controlled by families. Since the group as a whole is relatively new in the United States it is more organized around a military or spy paradigm (FAS, 1996). Many members of the group were members of the Russian military or the KGB at one time, and most, especially when it was a new organization in the United States, spent time in prisons in Russia. The group head was originally Vyatcheslav Ivankov, but he has since been replaced after spending an extended time in jail for extortion in New York.