33 Russian Mobsters Charged For Murder And Trafficking 10K Pounds Of Chocolate

Over 30 members of a New York City-based Russian crime group have been charged with racketeering, murder for hire and crimes including trafficking thousands of pounds of stolen chocolate, sources told WNBC on Wednesday.

Suspects could also be charged for their attempts to operate an illegal poker business in Brighton Beach, defraud casinos with a hacking device that predicted the behavior of slot machines, and stealing shipments from cargo ships. Another plan involved women seducing men and drugging them with chloroform in order to rob them.

Two of the defendants were overheard discussing a 10,000-pound shipment of stolen chocolate on a court-ordered wiretap in March, according to the indictment.

Early Wednesday the FBI’s Joint Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force arrested members of the group, known as the Shulaya Enterprise, according to law enforcement sources. Seven other suspects were still on the loose. The leaders of the organization, Razhden Shulaya, 40, of Edgewater, New Jersey, and Zurab Dzhanashvili, 37, of Brooklyn, New York, were among those arrested.

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Shulaya was referred to in the indictment as a “vor v zakonei” or “vor,” which were Russian phrases that roughly translate to “thief-in-law” and refer to “an order of elite criminals from the former Soviet Union.”

“As a vor, Shulaya had substantial influence in the criminal underworld and offered assistance to and protection of the members and associates,” the indictment said.

The group planned several crimes including trafficking stolen cigarettes and chocolate as well as illegal gambling, federal authorities say. Many of the group members were based in New York City, but others were located in Florida, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania and abroad, according to the indictment. They were predominantly from the former Soviet Union, and many of them had ties to Russia, Georgia and Ukraine.

The case showed how Russian and other Eurasian crime groups have branched out into new areas of crime, according to Mark Galeotti, a Russian crime specialist at the Institute of International Relations Prague in the Czech Republic.

“What surprises me actually is they were still involved in the traditional types of crime,” he said to the New York Times in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Joon H. Kim, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, stated the case was one of the first federal racketeering charges to ever be brought against a Russian vor. The authorities revealed three indictments and one criminal complaint.

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When people hear about Russian organized crime, they picture a stereotypical Russian thug, said Galeotti, the Russian crime expert.

“Yes there are tattooed thugs around, he said.

“The kind of Russian gangster one sees in America is more likely to be a fraudster, a hacker or semi-criminal businessman.”

Suspects arrested on Wednesday were expected in federal court.