Russian mafia penetrates US college campuses

An extract from Red Mafia by Robert Friedman: Russian gangsters in the USA ignore unwritten laws. The Italian mafia would not dare to injure an American journalist, judge, or prosecutor, as it knows perfectly well what punishment it may entail. It is just a bloody sport for the Russians. About eighty murders committed on Briton Beach are still uncovered. Russian gangsters are even richer and better armed than Columbia cartels, Japanese yakudza, Chinese triads, and the Italian mafia; Russian gangsters are the main enemy of the FBI. A leading technologist from the US Treasury exclaimed: 'A week was quite enough for them to learn how to make fake $100 notes, at the same time when we declare that the notes are protected from forgery!' They came here not to find the American dream, but to steal it.” The other day, the US Government circulated among all institutions of higher education a warning on possible cracks of their computer networks by hackers allegedly connected with the Russian mafia. The warning developed by the US Education Ministry together with the Finance Ministry’s Secret Service reports that unauthorized penetration into computer systems has been discovered in five universities and colleges in different states.

It is reported at that a Russia-born citizen whose name has not been published, was arrested in Pasadena (California) for an attempt to crack a college computer program to obtain names, credit card numbers, and private passwords of the students. Credit card numbers and private passwords are the main things hackers hunt for.

“The US secret service is carrying out a nation-wide investigation of several attempts to crack computers. The motives of hackers and exact number of cracked systems are still unidentified,” the circulated warning says.

US’s special services, the FBI in particular, constantly warns Americans of the greatest danger of mafia groups from the former Soviet Union, Interactive Week reports. Russian hackers crack commercial sites, steal credit card numbers, and launch destructive computer viruses; at that, the Russian mafia is becoming more and more experienced in computer crimes. According to statistics published by the FBI, organized criminal groups from Eastern Europe managed to steal over one million credit card numbers and crack Internet sites of over 40 companies in 20 US states. The Russian mafia is mentioned at that as the main threat to development of American e-commerce.

Extract from Red Mafia by Robert Friedman: “The scale of crimes committed by the Russian mafia is enormous. Murky deals involving diamonds, gasoline, medical insurance, and drug traffic have exceeded $1 billion in total. It is an unprecedented sum! There are 30 syndicates of the Russian mafia operating in North America; they are concentrated in 17 towns at least.”

EDITOR NOTE: Robert Friedman is a famous American expert and journalist and the author of the book Red Mafia.

Yegor Belous PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/06/26/43275.html