While there is real doubt that a true “Russian Mafia” exists in America, popular belief is that the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn is the capital of the most important “other Mafia” now functioning in the United States.
There is no doubt that the area is the center of much violence and brutality, at times said to rival the worst activities of the Mafia in Brighton Beach and Coney Island in its earlier days. It has been estimated that many thousands of illegal immigrants have entered the United States in recent years from the former Soviet Union under a grant of refugee status as politically oppressed people.
Many Brighton Beach inhabitants have come from Odessa and surrounding areas. The Black Sea port of Odessa has a long history of criminality, dating back to the days of the early czars and the pirates who ravaged the waters.
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Thus Odessa was long a thriving black market and developed a centuries-old criminal subculture. Although most residents of Brighton Beach are clearly law-abiding, they have been tarred as the Odessukuya, or Odessa Thieves, often described in the motherland as the worst of all Russian criminals.
According to federal authorities, many of these illegals have come out of Soviet prisons, obtained identifications of dead or imprisoned Soviet Jews and used them to reach the United States, often muddying their trails by first immigrating to Israel.
This “shuttle plan” is similar to one used by Italian mafiosi early in the 20th century, who traveled first to North Africa and then on to the American land of opportunity, their criminal backgrounds lost in the shuffle.
