How Georgian authority made a gang and became the most influential Russian in New York

In the United States, a loud trial of the Russian thief in law Rajdin Shulai, known in criminal circles under the nicknames ждajden St. Petersburg, Brother and Roma, is in full swing. According to investigators, the authority gathered people from the spaces of the former USSR around them and created the largest grouping in the States that did not disdain anything. Gangsters hacked into slot machines at the casinos of Atlantic City and Las Vegas, stole money from credit cards, sold weapons and drugs, and did not disdain homicides. "Lenta.ru report“I remembered the story of Brother - the thief in law, who always remained in the shadow and became a real headache for the American law enforcement officers.

Looking across Petersburg

Little is known about Rajdan Shulai’s life before his departure to the USA. He lived in St. Petersburg, studied at the local financial and economic university, and was several times prosecuted for robbery and kidnapping. According to some information, already at the end of 2000's, Shulai was well known to the criminal world of Russia not just as an authority, but as looking to St. Petersburg and a confidant of one of the main thieves in law, Zakharia Kalashova (Shakro Young).

Razhden, on the one hand, sought to follow the traditions of thieves - he lived modestly and did not work for anyone. However, in violation of the code of legalists, he was engaged in business and was the founder of several companies. In this regard, Shulai followed in the footsteps of his father, who was also an entrepreneur. It is curious that a snapshot of the grave of Shulaya Sr. is walking around the network at Bolsheokhtinsky cemetery in St. Petersburg: traces of arson are visible on a monument made in the pompous traditions of the authorities of the underworld. Since there is no data on the relationship of the deceased with the criminal world, it is possible that the enemies of his son tried to ruin the monument.

Photo: Criminal Russia

Rajden Shulai had two citizenships, Russian and Georgian; the last he got in 2010. Local media wrote that Shulai’s authority in Georgia’s criminal world was so high that he controlled Georgian prisons and agreed on the appointment of those who watched them even after moving to the United States.

Razhden Shulay received the title of thief in law relatively recently - in 2013; the ceremony was held in Cyprus. In the summer of that year, along with 18, criminal authorities from the expanses of the former USSR were detained in Europe, but soon released. Almost immediately after that, Brother went to the United States and began to create a criminal gang, which later included more than 30 people of different nationalities, mostly Georgians and Russians. The bandits acted in several states at once - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Nevada.

Fear and Loathing at Brighton Beach

For several years, members of the organized criminal group have organized several sophisticated criminal schemes. They used both classic criminal methods - for example, they sent to clients of entertainment establishments prostitutes with cloffleen who robbed them, and high-tech ones - such as hacking slot machine codes in Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos.

Most of the Brother's grouping, as you might guess, lived in the New York area of ​​Brighton Beach, controlling the business of the Russian-speaking diaspora. In the same place, the gangsters organized illegal clubs for playing poker, and some players, owing to the gangsters at the card table, became addicted to them and practiced the debt by participating in criminal schemes.

As a "part-time job", the members of the OCG Brother traded through fraud with credit cards, extortion, drug and arms trafficking, forgery of documents and theft of goods. By the way, sometimes gangsters stole rather unusual goods - for example, five tons of chocolate and confectionery from an unattended truck. However, the grouping had more serious cases: among other things, Brother’s bandits were accused of criminal conspiracy to kill. According to US law enforcement agencies, two members of the organized criminal group agreed to rob and kill a certain businessman to take several trucks with a million-dollar smuggled cigarettes from his warehouse. The accomplices were detained and arrested immediately after receiving a modest deposit of two thousand dollars for two.

Silent American

As the leader of a major organized crime group, Brother made every effort to look like an ordinary law-abiding citizen.

“Like many successful New York executives, he lived in the suburbs and had an office in the city. He led a home life in Edgewater (New Jersey), a quiet middle-class town on the Hudson River. From time to time I got into my black Mercedes and drove to Brighton Beach (...). Always well trimmed, wearing glasses and black clothes, Shuloi looked more like a nerd than a mob, ”the longreads.com portal told about him.

To clarify relations with opponents, Brother had a faithful assistant - a native of Georgia, world boxing champion Avtandil Khurtsidze. If someone paid to the obshchak not enough, the authority called the boxer. Khurtsidze got the nickname Suicide from the trainers for his cool temper: they said that only suicides could fight Avtandil. Later, already in court, the jury was shown a video of his participation: in frames, the boxer “explains” to partners and competitors the position of the leadership, accompanying his monologue with blows to the face or in the stomach.

These scenes were filmed by cameras installed in an underground gambling house, which Brother kept in an apartment above a restaurant in Brighton Beach. The cameras were designed so that the manager of the place, Alexander Kutsenko, could follow the gamblers on the screen of his phone. He had already managed to sit out 15 for years and, as he told the police, he didn’t want to be involved in a crime again. Kutsenko himself came to the FBI, and it was with the help of his phone that the agents watched in real time what was happening in the underground casino - including the way Brother and Khurtsidze beat the owner of one of the gaming machines, accusing him of theft.

These mysterious thieves

Brother was detained in Edgewater, in his own house on the banks of the Hudson River, which overlooks Manhattan from its windows. Along with him, another 33 man was brought to court, among them the boxer Khurtsidze and the authority of Zurab Janashvili, who was considered to be the right hand of Brother. Shortly before the trial, Janashvili pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. During interrogation, he described the former boss as "the most influential person in the Russian-speaking world of New York."

However, the defenders of Brother, Khurtsidze and others denied that clients belong to the world of thieves, so the prosecution had to make a lot of effort to prove that the founder of the organized criminal group is a thief in law. The snag was also in the fact that there were no tattoos in the form of eight-pointed stars, which usually denote belonging to the thieves' class, on the body of Brother.

“Shulai’s organization is recognized by an organized criminal group operating under the direction and protection of Rajden Shulai, vor v zakone or vor - Russian definitions that refer to the name of elite criminals from the former Soviet Union who receive tribute from other criminals, offer protection and use their recognized status to resolve disputes among lower-level criminals, the official report says on the website of the court of the Southern District of New York. - So the Shulai organization had a significant impact on the underworld and offered help and protection to its members. They, like Shulai himself, were engaged in large-scale criminal activities, including acts of violence, extortion, illegal gambling business, and fraud in various casinos. ”

The same report notes that the jury found Brother guilty on five counts and now faces a total of up to 65 years in prison. His accomplice Khurtsidze was found guilty of computer fraud and could get up to 20 years in prison. It is curious that 41-year-old Brother can become the third thief in law with Russian roots, convicted in the United States. The first was the famous Vyacheslav Ivankov (Jap), who received 1995 years in prison for extortion in 9,5; the second is a prominent Armenian lawyer Armen Ghazaryan (Pzo), who was sentenced in 2013 to 37 months in prison for financial fraud.

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Ruthless thief in law: how the father of the Russian mafia kept all Brighton Beach at bay

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