From today's NY Daily News...

Moving In On The Mob

Say Albanian gangsters muscled out Lucheses

BY GREG B. SMITH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A group of violent Balkan gangsters has made mob history by kicking one of New York's five Mafia families off the block, the Daily News has learned.
The dubious distinction belongs to a highly organized Albanian group that called itself The Corporation, authorities said. The outfit tossed the Luchese crime family out of Astoria, Queens, prosecutors said.

The FBI and Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley announced yesterday the arrest of the group's alleged boss, Alex Rudaj, and 21 other reputed gang members charged in a racketeering indictment.

The indictment does not mention the Luchese family, merely a "competing criminal organization." But a prosecutor outlined the underworld coup during a bail hearing yesterday.

For years, the Luchese family - founded in the 1950s - controlled gambling in Astoria through Greek associates, law enforcement sources said. But by the summer of 2001, the Luchese family was in disarray, authorities said. Its boss was jailed for life, its underboss was facing extortion charges, and its acting boss was under heavy surveillance. The family was down to 120 members from 200.

Enter Alex Rudaj, head of a Bronx-based Albanian gang that was itching to expand its gambling operations, prosecutors said. During the bail hearing in Manhattan Federal Court, prosecutor Tim Treanor said the Rudaj group was responsible for "several beatings in taking over the Astoria operations" from the Luchese family.

The prosecutor alleged one defendant, Ljusa Nuculovic, held a knife to the throat of a suspected informant and was involved in an August 2001 shoot-'em-up at an Astoria social club called Soccer Fever. Nuculovic, an admitted gun-runner for the Kosovo Liberation Army during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, wound up taking over the Lucheses' Astoria operation, Treanor said.

Nuculovic was denied bail yesterday.

Sources said the Albanians also were involved in beating up associates of both the Luchese and Colombo families. And boss Rudaj even went so far as to steal a nickname - Allie Boy - from Colombo boss Alphonse Persico, sources said.

"We have seen ... groups such as the Russians moving in on La Cosa Nostra," Kelley said. "This happens to be the most extensive that I've seen."

50 years ago it would have been a whole different story......I'm still waiting for La Cosa Nostra to make its return.

wishful thinking. But not likely

Uh... read that article and it's different than the title suggests. The Lucchese's basically were all in jail or dead, and left operations behind... so Albanians came in and snatched up business. Theres no mention of physical war between Cosa Nostra and these Albanians/Russians/whatever. I want to see war between the Italians and Russians; it'll be a massacre, and the Russians will definatly be getting some Sicilian messages.

that is what I meant by it would have been different

I think this story leads to overblown conclusions:

Even before the Mafia encountered its current problems, it moved out of neighborhoods when the pickings were no longer easy and profitable. They're like the old ethnic groups like Jews, Italians and Irish that move out of their old neighborhoods to the suburbs and leave the old neighborhoods to newer arrivals like Asians, blacks and hispanics. Why struggle for retail profits in drugs and numbers in Astoria, Queens, which is mostly a Greek and Eastern European neighborhood now, when the Mafia can make more with stock frauds on Wall Street or trash hauling rackets on Long Island? My guess is there weren't many violent incidents twixt Albanian and Lucchese gangsters--the Luccheses probably packed up and left quietly.

"Our enemies get rich on what we leave behind..."

tony b.

You could be right, Turnbull, but I'm thinking that perhaps it was just some low low level Luchese soldiers or associates, still trying to hang on to the crumbs that were available in the "old neighborhood".

These low level guys don't get the opportunity to participate in stock frauds, but they're still "earners", albeit small ones.

The guys in Donnie Brasco come to mind. Still making nickels and dimes breakng into parking meters.

Interesting story. Thanks for posting it. As misleading as it might be, you gotta admit, the things has got to put an image in people's minds.

An image I don't care to see being attached la famiglia.

The Mob needs to take some action and whack a slew of other ethnic gangs. They need to whack the bosses of Russians, Colombians, punk gangs, etc. and send a message that the business is theirs. Actually, being Italian-American, I want the glory and power back with my people.

So you view organized crime as a good thing, then? Something to be proud of?

Not crime. For the Italian families. I want the power back to them. The business was not traditionally like any other crime, anyway. And yeah, theres a lot of mob figures I like.