Monday,
March 03, 2008
"Soviet Jewry" is the New "Mafiya" in
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
Chicago Sun Times may have finally overcome its singular obsession with an
nearly extinct, and at its best merely petty Italian American crime
involvement, and faced up to the other CURRENT THREATS that include the
Columbian Cartel, Mexican Mafia, the Israeli "Kosher Nostra" and as
below the "Soviet Jewry Mafiya"
One
of the downsides of the "Save Soviet Jewry" in
Thanks to
BY
Steve Warmbir and Frank Main
Staff
Reporters
February
24, 2008
Lev
"Dollar" Stratievsky survived the Holocaust
as a boy, came to
Flush with
success, he would hold court at a table in one of the restaurants he owned and,
like any proud father, brag about his son.
"In his
youth, Borya was very daring," Stratievsky once said. "He had attempted murders and
s---."
The son, Boris "Borya"
Stratievsky, also dubbed "Half
Dollar," wasn't picky about the method, his father said.
"It's the
same for Boris, whether to stab someone with a knife or shoot them," Lev Stratievsky explained.
His son
had brains, too.
Boris Stratievsky was "a professor" of
money-laundering, washing millions of dollars for shadowy
The
father-and-son team were allegedly part of a growing threat in the Chicago
area -- crooks coming from Russia, Poland, the Balkans and other parts of
Eastern Europe, eager to
make a buck any way they can: stealing luxury cars and heavy construction equipment
and shipping them overseas, peddling drugs and guns to Chicago street gangs,
committing mortgage fraud and health care fraud, and trafficking in fake IDs
and young women.
"They're
entrepreneurs,"
said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Kristi K. Johnson, an expert on the groups
in
"That's what
it's all about -- the almighty dollar," said FBI Special Agent Michael D.
Rollins, who leads a group of 14 agents targeting these new
They
aren't the Mafia. They're the new Mafiya.
While the FBI
can't say exactly how many of them there are in Chicago, the problem of Russian
and Eastern European organized-crime groups here "is continuing to
increase, and I don't think that's going to change," said James Wagner,
head of the Chicago Crime Commission and a former FBI supervisor who battled
traditional organized crime in Chicago for decades.
Unlike the
Chicago Outfit, in the new Mafiya, there's no single
leader who calls the shots over the different factions, according to law
enforcement experts. There's no burning of a holy card in the hand, no pricking
of the finger, no loyalty oath. No "made" members.
But just because
there's less of a formal structure doesn't make the groups any less
sophisticated or dangerous, law enforcement officials said.
The criminal
groups scoff at
Target
their own people
These groups
keep their circles of criminal associates tight, sticking to family members or
people coming from the same city overseas.
And when they
get arrested, they often just make bail and flee back home.
What's more,
their threats and violence have an added dimension. The criminal groups often
prey on their own people, not only menacing them with violence but also
threatening to have their families hurt back home.
When one thug
wanted to scare a woman he'd brought over from
In another
federal trial in Chicago, in 2006, this one involving a Russian enforcer named Israil Vengerin, a Russian
businesswoman testified that two thugs with baseball bats savagely beat her,
putting her in the hospital, after she refused to pay Vengerin
a "street tax."
In a 2001 case, a
man named Jacek Polszakiewicz,
who sold fake immigration documents in Chicago to illegal aliens -- some of
whom he believed to be Russian mobsters -- plotted the killing of a man he
thought had ripped him off.
And Lev Stratievsky himself was caught on tape by federal
authorities talking about how to kill a witness in a case involving one of his
colleagues. Of course, if that colleague were to decide to cooperate with the
FBI, Lev Stratievsky mused, he, too, would have to be
killed, records show.
In neither of
those two cases did the talk of murder ever become reality.
The recordings
the FBI secretly made of Lev Stratievsky holding
court and, to a lesser degree, of his son from 1999 to 2001, provide an unusual
window into a world of two men authorities have called associates of Russian
organized crime here.
Often sitting
near Lev Stratievsky was a man with a reputation as a
brutal loan collector. Lev Stratievsky sent the man
out to collect his debts. But the man's true purpose was to collect Lev Stratievsky's words -- a torrent of talk swept up by a
secret recording device the man wore for the FBI, court records show.
Lev Stratievsky was a Ukrainian who survived the Holocaust as a
little boy, according to court filings. He came to this country in 1978, would
be arrested in 2005 and died the following year in prison at the age of 67, his
son's attorneys calling him a drunk who made up stories.
The son, Boris,
46, wound up facing charges, too, and has sat in jail awaiting trial since
2005, far from his $5 million
Boris Stratievsky's attorney, Ed Genson
-- who also represents R&B singer R. Kelly among other notable, affluent
clients -- defends Stratievsky, calling him "a
legitimate businessman."
However Boris Stratievsky made his money, he was successful. He
co-owned a Boeing 707 and leased it to an airline. He and his father owned more
than $15 million in real estate throughout the
'That's
20 years in prison'
He had a secret
room in his
His taste for
intrigue descended into paranoia.
He once had an
employee check every roof tile at his office for a listening device.
Unfortunately for Boris Stratievsky, the employee was
snitching on him to the feds, court records show.
Boris Stratievsky warned his father about keeping incriminating
records around, according to one FBI transcript. But the father confided to his
muscle man -- the FBI undercover informant -- that he
didn't listen.
"We have a
closet, I have checks are lying [there]. ... If Boris finds out, he'll kill me.
... I have my illegal books, what I deal in. Get my little suitcase, that's 20
years in prison. I hope to God no one come to me tomorrow and asks me, 'Show me
your books. How do you operate?' " Lev Stratievsky was caught on tape saying.
Lev Stratievsky worried that even a modest investigation of him
could upend his world.
"If they
investigate me . . . for the baby toe on my foot, the s--- will run out of me,
damn it," he said on one tape.
Boris Stratievsky even warned his father's muscle man -- in
reality, the undercover FBI informant -- that he had two cops on his payroll who could beat the man up and plant drugs on him.
The tough talk
didn't deter the informant from helping the FBI build a case against Boris Stratievsky. The FBI's undercover man first tried to get
Boris Stratievsky to wash $10,000 in illegal
proceeds. In reality, it was money from the FBI.
Boris Stratievsky refused, saying the amount was too little and
not worth the risk. So the amounts increased, with the informant washing about
$200,000 through Boris Stratievsky, according to the
indictment against him. In addition to money-laundering charges, Boris Stratievsky also is charged with having fake passports.
Boris Stratievsky's cut was 20 percent, federal authorities
allege.
He had quite a
money-laundering network, according to court records, with a Swiss banking
contact and mail drops throughout
Authorities say
they think Boris Stratievsky had some high-profile
clients, including one who was a member of the Russian Duma,
the equivalent of a congressman in
Investigators say
they think Boris Stratievsky plunged some of the
money he laundered for his Russian clients into real estate, court
records show.
Hauled
into court by city
A Sun-Times
review of real estate, court and corporate records found more than 30 companies
were associated with one or both of the Stratievskys,
who had more than $15 million in property.
Bankrolling many
of their mortgages was Broadway Bank, owned by the family of
In many instances
with their properties, Lev and Boris Stratievsky were
not model owners, records show. The City of
Holt, who lost in
the 1999 election, did not respond to a request for comment.
Diane Cosby lived
in a roach-infested building in the 4500 block of North Magnolia that the Stratievskys owned through one of their companies, Interpacifica.
Cosby, 61,
remembers three Russian tough guys pressuring tenants to move out in the
mid-1990s to clear the way for a renovation of the apartment building into
condos.
"They pulled
the roof off the back part of the building, and it rained all over the people
who lived there," Cosby recalled.
"They were
the worst landlords I ever had," she said. "We always called them
Russian mobsters. ... We did not know they were mobsters, but they sure
looked like them."
''It's the same
for Boris, whether to stab someone with a knife or shoot them.'' -- Lev Stratievsky, Boris' father
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