Source: Miami Herald (FL) Contact: http://www.herald.com/ Pubdate: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 Author: Juan O. Tamayo, Herald Staff Writer RUSSIAN MAFIA THRIVES IN SOUTH FLORIDA When Russian nightclub owner Oleg Kirillov decided to fly to Miami last December and spend his New Year's vacation in the sun and surf, the FBI got ready to celebrate, too. Pegged as the head of a powerful Russian crime gang, the 31-year-old Kirillov was arrested by FBI agents soon after he arrived and was charged with conspiracy to export cocaine from Miami to Moscow. Yet the bust got little publicity, perhaps because Kirillov was only one of scores of Russian mobsters who visit South Florida, perhaps because his is only one of the dozen or so Russian gangs known to operate here. With little fanfare, Russian-speaking mobsters regarded as the most sophisticated criminals ever to hit America have turned South Florida into one of their main U.S. bases, behind only New York and maybe San Francisco. They are holding internal summits and meeting with Italian Mafia and Colombian drug cartel leaders, buying luxury condos and running scams, according to a dozen FBI, DEA and local officials and private money-laundering experts interviewed by The Herald. ``What elevates Miami to the top of Russian organized crime in the U.S. is the access to banks in the Caribbean and drugs in Latin America,'' said Hardrick Crawford Jr., head of the FBI's organized crime branch in Miami. Some clear evidence of the Russian mob's presence here: **Sergei Aksyonov, reputed head of Russia's second-largest and most violent gang -- ``No. 2 with a bullet,'' one FBI official joked -recently bought several luxury condos on north Collins Avenue through two relatives. **Anzor Kikalischvili, a Russian businessman denied a U.S. entry visa last year for alleged ties to crime gangs, bragged in a 1996 FBI wiretap that he had 600 employees in Miami alone. **Four of Russia's highest-ranking mobsters met in Miami in 1993 to decide how their gangs would split up the government-owned hotels and factories that were privatized that year, law enforcement officers who watched them say. ``There are definitely a lot of major league players here . . . who want that Miami Vice lifestyle,'' said Bob Levinson, who retired recently as the FBI's top expert in Miami on Russian mobsters. Bosses And Underlings Law enforcement agents in Miami say they have grown used to seeing lots of young Russian men in luxury beach hotels, a few of them apparently bosses who bring bodyguards and even satellite phones. But most appear to be foot soldiers, athletic young men who sport the homemade tattoos that denote prison experience and the track suits that are the virtual uniforms of low-level Russian hoodlums. ``They are on all-expenses-paid vacation, perhaps rewards for a whacking [killing] well done,'' said Kenneth Rijock, a Miami-based law enforcement consultant on financial crimes. The Russians' arrival in South Florida has clearly worried law enforcement agencies. The FBI's Miami office created a 13-person ``Russia-Eurasia'' squad last July after a threat-assessment study put Russian organized crime in fourth place -- behind Colombians, La Cosa Nostra and ``other Caribbeans'' and ahead of the Sicilian mob. The FBI has Russia squads in only five other U.S. cities. Task forces watches mob That squad is in addition to Odessa, a joint task force of Miami-area U.S. and local law enforcement agencies, financed with federal funds, that began monitoring the Russian mob in South Florida around 1993. Odessa has scored some victories, most notably last year's arrest of Ludwig Fainberg, Ukrainian-born owner of the Porky's strip club in Hialeah, and 20 others on drug, weapons, counterfeit money, prostitution and stolen liquor charges. But both the FBI and Odessa face an uphill battle against mobsters who are extremely clannish, have rogue KGB veterans advising them on security precautions, and speak a relatively uncommon language. None of the new FBI squad's 13 members speak Russian. And the lack of major indictments since the Fainberg case -- which generated about 15,000 tape-recorded conversations -- indicates the depth of the difficulties. Russian mobsters -- some law enforcement officers jokingly call them Redfellas -- come to South Florida for the same reasons as other retirees, other tourists and other criminals. ``Miami's climate is perfect for guys who have spent a long time in Siberian prisons,'' said Lee Lamothe, publisher of a Toronto-based newsletter on financial and organized crime. A Deal-Making Center Lamothe isn't talking about just the weather: From their perch in South Florida, an international banking center and hub of U.S. trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, the Russian gangsters can negotiate and monitor all sorts of deals. ``If you're a Russian crook, you get a condo in Miami and a bent bank in the Caribbean and you're in heaven,'' said Mike McDonald, the IRS's top money laundering expert in Miami before he retired early this year. Russian criminals began arriving in America after President Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed emigration controls in the late 1980s. But they were largely petty thugs running low-level scams that police call ``disorganized crime.'' Russian organized crime gangs blossomed only after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, sparking powerful alliances among traditional mobsters, corrupt bureaucrats and even KGB veterans. Their penetration of America began after top mobsters met near Moscow in 1992 and voted to send one of their own, Vyacheslav Ivankov, to explore opportunities in New York's huge Brighton Beach emigre community. Within months, Ivankov was spotted in Miami. And soon afterward, the mob began popping up in other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. Exposing Russians' Role The FBI's Miami office had infiltrated Ivankov's gang by 1994 and literally ``wrote the book on Russian organized crime'' -- a report detailing the names and practices of a group until then all but unknown in the West. ``It was like the Valachi case in the Mafia -- the first real look inside the organization,'' said Levinson, who now works for Decision Strategies/Fairfax International, a private U.S. security consulting firm. Joe Valachi was the first Italian Mafia member to break its code of silence and give law enforcement a rundown on its inner workings in the 1960s. Ivankov was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to nine years in prison for trying to extort money from two Russian businessmen. But others have since followed his path to Miami. The head of Russia's single largest crime group until his arrest in Switzerland last year, Sergei Mikhailov, and other top mobsters met in a luxury Miami Beach hotel in 1993 to divide up Russian properties about to be sold to private investors, law enforcement officials said. An FBI affidavit in Kirillov's case file described him as head of the crime gang in Nishni Novgorod -- a powerhouse industrial city that manufactures everything from nuclear submarines to MiG warplanes. Convicted of fraud in Russia, he is awaiting trial here on charges that he conspired to buy nine pounds of cocaine a month from Peruvian dealers in New York, bring the drugs to Miami and smuggle them to Moscow. ``Totally unfounded charges,'' said Kirillov's lawyer, Alan E. Weinstein. Vyacheslav Sliva, deported from Canada to Russia last year as a top mobster, and the reputed bosses of Russian gangs in Los Angeles and Denver have all been spotted in Miami in recent years, Lamothe said. And the wife and daughter of Aksyonov, reputed head of Moscow's powerful Ismailova gang, have bought several condos here even though he has been denied a U.S. visa. The dozen Russian gangs in Miami have been spotted running health insurance frauds, counterfeit money and prostitution rings, visa scams and extortion attempts on Russian emigres. But while Russians and Colombian drug smugglers have been spotted meeting several times in Miami, Drug Enforcement Administration officials believe the cocaine is destined for Europe, not the U.S. market. ``Presently we do not feel the impact of any Russian influence as far as the narcotics industry in South Florida is concerned,'' said William Mitchell, the DEA's South Florida office chief. Other law enforcement officials in Miami admit, however, that they still don't know as much as they would like to about the Russians. ``I'm not embarrassed to say we are still learning,'' Crawford of the FBI said. Among the puzzles: A growing number of Russians are working in the janitorial staffs of area hotels, stores and office buildings -- jobs the mob has sometimes used for large-scale thefts in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. When police raided a Russian mob-linked shop in Chicago last year that was selling luxury goods such as Armani clothes and Coach handbags, many of the items turned out to have been stolen in the Miami area. When federal prosecutors in New York charged 25 Russian emigres in 1995 with pocketing $140 million in fuel sales taxes due the U.S. government, the main firm involved turned out to have an office in Miami. When Ukrainian police arrested two British men who tried to cash counterfeit bank drafts worth $7 million in January, the documents carried the name of a nonexistent ``Florida's Ocean Bank.'' And after reputed mobster Eugene Susker pleaded guilty to tax fraud in Ohio in 1995, he asked for leniency in sentencing because he was working on a big business deal: a floating casino based in a Florida port he never named. ``The real problem is that we're not seeing 99 percent of what [the Russian mob] is doing in Miami right now,'' consultant Rijock said. Added Levinson: ``They are weaving their webs right now, testing authority to see what they can do. We are learning, but they are learning, too.'' - ---