Serving sentence in two countries: how the life of the leader of the largest 'Russian' gang in America developed

The leader of the largest “Russian” gang in America has moved to an Israeli prison, reports with the BBC

Photo: Shutterstock

The former leader of the largest “Russian” gang, which the American police and FBI managed to defeat this century, 54-year-old Gidon Abramov, was sent to serve his sentence from an American prison to an Israeli one last week.

The epithet “Russian” is a common simplification for Americans: the gang that committed several high-profile robberies in 2002-2004 included natives of various former republics of the USSR.

Gidon Abramov himself was born in Baku. He was sentenced in 2008 to a 25-year term for a whole bunch of crimes, served 17 years in the United States since his arrest, and is now sent to serve the rest of the term in Israel, of which he is a citizen.

Abramov was involved in the case of a brigade with several names. At first, the FBI called it the “Abramov-Drubetsky Brigade” in honor of Gidon and his accomplice Arthur Drubetsky, nicknamed Bald. Then it shortened the name of this group to the “Abramov Brigade”, and a little later renamed it to the “Passage Brigade” after the gang’s favorite Russian restaurant in Brooklyn.

According to the FBI, at that time it was the largest “Russian” brigade defeated in the United States.

Initially, there were 19 people involved in her case, and as they split up and began to lay accomplices (or, as they say in the USA, they became “cooperators”, since they cooperated with the investigation), their number continued to grow until it reached about 25 defendants .

The brigade has set a record for the number of cooperators.

Abramov joined this cooperative movement almost on the day of his arrest, or, as the famous Brooklyn thug Monya Elson puts it, “while still in the elevator.” Abramov was arrested on November 4, 2004, they immediately attached a digital recording device to him and sent him to record a conversation with Drubetsky.

On the very first meetings with the investigators, Abramov told them about such a number of crimes that it is pointless to list them all. Let's recall the most iconic ones.

He first got into the newspaper in 1991, when the New York Post announced the arrest of a group of Soviet emigrants, including Abramov, then 25 years old. The arrest was the fruit of a month-long investigation that culminated in a search of an apartment in Brooklyn, where firearms, cartridges, a homemade bomb and a hand grenade were seized.

Abramov served about ten years and soon after his release took up the old as part of the brigade, which later was honored with his name. Her most notorious crime was the broad day robbery of Michael Ashton Fine Jewelry on fashionable Madison Avenue in New York.

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It was also an extremely rare “Russian” crime, since immigrants from the CIS, as a rule, rob their own stores, not native ones.

Finally, although the hijackers stole a million dollars worth of jewelry, the robbery was extremely mediocre.

The robbers, who broke into the store at about 11:30 a.m. on July 16, 2004, spoke to the saleswomen in English with a Russian accent, and clearly in Russian to each other. Therefore, the authorities immediately began searching for the raiders in the Russian community. The task was made easier by the fact that it was swarming with informants.

The drops of fresh blood left by one of the robbers on the floor after he smashed a shop window with his hand also helped. They were checked against an all-American database and found that the DNA belonged to Abramov, from whom genetic material was taken from him after previous arrests.

Surveillance spotted him in Brooklyn driving a Honda Accord, which had been fined twice near a jewelry store before the robbery.

Finally, the robbers went to work without masks.

One of Abramov’s crimes ended in disgraceful failure, since the owner of the Tatyana restaurant, Tatyana Varzar, flatly refused to give him valuables, although he beat her with the butt of a pistol on the head and legs, with which she fought him off, leaning back in her open car.

“Then my legs felt like ink,” she recalled.

On February 26, 2004, he attacked a fragile pretty woman in a garage on the Brighton Beach waterfront next to her restaurant. It was 2 pm on Saturday.

This time Abramov went to work in a mask, although Tatyana fleetingly saw his face when her heel pushed the mask to the side.

“He thought he was going to stun me,” the victim said. “But I didn’t fall unconscious, I continued to flounder, kicking out…” According to Tatyana, she thought that the attacker’s gun was not real.

She never gave Abramov the ring and watch, which he was trying to take away. He smashed her head and left.

“It’s a blessing that such a ruthless person will be imprisoned,” Tatyana remarked after Abramov pleaded guilty. “I can only say one thing: well, it’s not worth it!” Well, okay, so he stole, he’ll never use it anyway, it turns out. Spend your whole life in prison..."

Actually, not all of it. According to calculations by the federal prison department, the estimated release date for Abramov, if he remained in the United States, is August 15, 2026. He would get credit for years spent in the bullpen. In addition, the term in the United States is reduced by about 15% for exemplary behavior. As of March 6 last year, Abramov thus reduced his sentence by 810 days.

In May, Israel sent a letter to the US Department of Justice stating that Abramov's term, under certain conditions, could be reduced there as well. In both cases, he has a good chance to be released alive.

Another crime of Abramov: he and three accomplices broke into the house of the owner of the St. Petersburg bookstore, Natalya Orlova. The bandits pointed a gun at her son, who was then 3,5 years old.

“Every time I remember his face when he says: “What are you, uncle, a ninja?” - said Orlova.

“A month later he tells me,” she continued, “You know, they weren’t ninjas, they were ordinary bandits!” The nanny probably explained it to him. This strange hostage effect worked for him: he started talking to them. He tells him: “If you are a ninja, then why are you here?! Go kill Baba Yaga!

The hijackers took a small safe with them.

The biggest loot went to the brigade not in the jewelry store on Madison Avenue, but in the apartment of the antiquarian, former Kiev resident Dmitry Markov in Brooklyn. He lived on the top floor of a six-story building, and the bandits came down to his balcony on a rope from the roof. The door to the balcony was open due to the heat, Markov turned off the alarm.

Photo: Shutterstock

The owner of the apartment and his girlfriend watched the film “How It Was Done in Odessa” before going to bed and peacefully went to rest, when suddenly at 4 in the morning a noise was heard on the balcony. Markov flew out of bed with a wild cry and met the uninvited guests, who hit him with a pistol and cut his lip and forehead.

The landlord and his guest were tied up and put on the bed.

“Hands back, it’s impossible to move, that is, you feel like a ram to the slaughter,” Markov later described his feelings to me.

Trophies - coins, icons, sabers, etc. - were carried out over the course of two hours. The containers they brought with them were not enough, and the raiders borrowed the owner’s. Markov said that the property stolen from him weighed 200 kilograms and was officially valued at about one and a half million dollars, although in reality it was worth, according to him, much more.

All this was not insured, and the damage caused to him was irreparable.

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York.

The assistance provided by Abramov to the investigation did not shorten his term in the least. When the defense raised this issue before the sentencing, the judge indifferently explained that he began to cooperate with the investigation without signing a standard cooperation agreement with the prosecutor's office beforehand.

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