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Eurasian Organized Crime


pogoyo

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STRUCTURE OF THE EOC

 

EOC groups in the state of California are predominantly Armenian, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Members are highly successful in adapting to a variety of criminal schemes. This, in large part,

is due to their flexible structure, global connections, and desire for wealth and power. The most

economically threatening crimes that EOC groups conduct in the state are healthcare and

financial frauds. EOC groups also engage in criminal activities including firearms trafficking,

auto theft, cargo theft, extortion, murder, prostitution, money laundering, drugs, insurance fraud,

recycling fraud, smuggling, immigration fraud, and human trafficking.

 

EOC groups can adapt to changing circumstances almost instantly and shift to new criminal
schemes as needed. It is not uncommon for EOC groups to shut down a criminal activity and
move to different regions or change criminal activity altogether once law enforcement is alerted
to them. This ability to react to circumstances and adapt makes EOC a continuing problem for
law enforcement.

 

Unlike other organized crime groups, EOC is unique due to its extremely fluid structure. Levels
of EOC organization and sophistication vary depending on the group. EOC criminal enterprises 

have loosely based criminal networks that form relationships for mutual benefit. These networks 

are venture specific and consist of individuals who possess certain positions or roles based on 

their knowledge, personal characteristics, or experience. Once the criminal enterprise is no longer 

profitable, the network disbands. At this point, the EOC criminals will move on to form new 

networks.

 

Evidence and studies suggest Eurasian TOC groups no longer conform to the typical hierarchical 

structure of traditional organized crime groups, but instead are divided into supporting networks, 

or cells, each having a different function or responsibility while sharing a common overarching goal. 

This framework allows cells to operate independently, limiting their contact with members of the 

entire organization, thus protecting high level organized crime figures.

 

Eurasian organized crime is a lot less … organized. Their “gangs” are loosely affiliated networks of 

criminals who band together opportunistically—more like independent contractors than employees.

When Eurasian mobsters see a business opportunity, like a chance to defraud Medicare, they tap

into their network to see who’s available. The authority figures often prefer to send an operative with

no criminal record to execute the scam. After collecting enough, he then disappears back into Russia,

Armenia, or wherever else he can be sheltered. Having turned a tidy profit, the agent may never

speak to the scheme’s mastermind again. While the Teflon dons of the Mafia excelled at beating

charges in court, Eurasian mobsters are rarely identified in the first place.

 

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Case Study: Vory V Zakone

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It was in the Soviet prisons and gulags where the modern vory v zakone began to come together. The ultimate distinguishing feature of a vor in Russia was prison time; it became a badge of honour because it represented both a real and symbolic ostracism from society. Time spent in the gulags also forged a stronger secret fraternity and helped the existing vors recruit others inside the prisons into their underground society (Handelman, 1995: 31). The vors became an elite class of offender in Soviet prisons and by attracting “violent aides ready to carry out the orders of vory,” they assumed positions of authority to informally govern inmates in prisons and camps (Volkov, 2014: 163). Writing back in the 1930s, a Russian scholar named Dmitri Likhachev observed that convicts in construction squads building Stalin’s infamous Baltic-White Sea Canal formed a cohesive unit and “ultimately they are governed by a system of collective beliefs that is remarkably uniform among criminals within different ethnic roots.” Likhachev noted that a “Thieves’ Court” regularly punished anyone who broke the rules (as cited in Handelman, 1995: 21).

 

It was during the period before and following World War II that the vory became increasingly involved in the criminal underworld, committing petty crimes, and later becoming involved in more organized infractions such as extortion. After Stalin’s death in 1953, the 7 amnesty provided to many political prisoners in Russia resulted in the release of hundreds of vors back into society, where they integrated themselves into the criminal underworld and the shadow economy. By the 1960s, a new vory began to eclipse the old guard. They cloaked themselves in the rituals, customs, and thieves’ code, but were much more driven by material gains. While the older vory was characterized by a rigid leadership style and modest criminal operations, focusing mostly on theft and extortion, the new vory was more flexible and fluid in its leadership and structure, was organized along a more ambitious (regional and national) scale, and became involved in a greater diversity of profit-oriented crimes, including black marketeering. In the underground economy, the “thieves-in-law offered a wide range of criminal services (from ‘knocking out’ a debtor’s money to contract killing), and became a second-tier distribution vehicle for shadow capital.” They also “supervised shadow businesspeople, tsekhoviki, protecting them from robberies and extortions, providing enforcement for contracts, and sometimes simply blackmailing them and thereby forcing them to share their profits” (Cheloukhine, 2012: 113).

 

The demise of the Soviet Union and the introduction of the free market system in Russia provided the most fertile ground for those criminals active in the underground economy and schooled in a political system rife with corruption. Today, the vory v zakone form a sort of Russian criminal aristocracy. The vory is not in itself an identifiable, independent organized crime group, but the vors are a recognized elite within the Russian criminal world. The individual vors may hold various positions and have different degrees of power depending on their capabilities. In Russian crime groups, there are the leaders and there are the vors. Both have control and command functions, and a vor may also be a leader of a particular crime group. Yet, the vors generally maintain a higher status than the leaders of individual Russian crime groups, no matter how large or powerful those groups may be. A vor may influence many groups simultaneously as the head of an association or confederation, rather than leading a single group. He commits very few crimes directly; instead, he is acknowledged as a patron to other offenders, bringing together individuals for specific criminal conspiracies, adjudicating disputes among them, and furthering criminal activities through his relationships with corrupt officials and law enforcement agents. In this respect, the role and status of a vor are somewhat analogous to the Mafioso.

 

The vors are reportedly supported financially by the revenues from crime groups they are associated with or oversee. The Russian criminal underworld is believed to be divided up amongst a number of vors, each of whom is recognized by the others as the authority in his respective territory. It is also believed that there may be one top-level vor who has been given responsibility by other vors for overseeing Russian criminal activities in Germany, Canada, and the United States. This top-level vor is chosen at a meeting of members and requires the recommendations of at least two other bosses—the more recommendations, the more prestige (Handelman, 1995; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1995; Rawlinson, 1998; Nicaso, 2001; Cheloukhine, 2012).

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