Anatoly Legkodymov busted - Bitzlato

Anatoly Legkodymov

Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, was arrested in Miami and is charged with conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business. His company processed more than $700m of illicit funds from 2018 to 2022. Bitzlato told customers and would-be customers that it had lax identification requirements. That made Bitzlato a haven for criminals world-wide. The company frequently did transactions with Hydra Market, the world’s largest dark-net marketplace. German cops shut down Hydra Market in April 2022. Prosecutors said that Bitzlato was subject to U.S. money-laundering rules even though it was based in China and run by a Russian.

Although the company claimed that it didn't allow U.S. users, prosecutors said the company did substantial business with Americans.

Bitzlato was a cryptocurrency exchange that was founded by Legkodymov in 2016. Bitzlato allowed customers to purchase cryptocurrencies with cash, exchange cryptocurrencies for other cryptocurrencies, and send cryptocurrency to other users. According to the Amended Complaint, since May of 2018, Bitzlato has processed $4.58 b worth of cryptocurrency transactions. Legkodymov is looking at 5 years.

Russian crime bosses killed in Ukraine

Three Russian crime bosses recruited by the Wagner Group were killed in the war in Ukraine. They are Sergei Maksimenko, Andrei Berezhnykh, and Igor Kusk. Maksimenko was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the Republic of Mordovia. He headed a criminal group in the city of Penza.

Berezhnykh was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder and other crimes in Saratov Oblast from 1994 to 2011. Berezhnykh was killed during the fighting in Ukraine on December 8, 2022, having joined Wagner a month earlier to escape prison.

Igor Kusk had been serving a 23-year prison sentence in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic. Kusk established his criminal group, the Kuskovites, in Tatarstan in 1998. The group was active and were notable for having many veterans of the Afghan war in their ranks. Ihor Kusk was brought to the Russian city of Nizhnyokamsk by plane in a closed coffin. Sources say that he was killed by a mine. Relatives say his head was blown off by a shell fragment.

Icebox saves cocaine smuggler's lives - update

Aristides Avlontis has been arrested. 2 others are sought after cops found 365kg of cocaine off Western Australia’s coast. The men were found clinging to an icebox in the ocean off Albany Feb 1, telling cops their boat had capsized while fishing.

Mate Stipinovich

Karl Whitburn

Aristides Avlontis

Days later cocaine washed ashore and a 7-metre boat was found. The boat returned more cocaine with the final tally over 365kg. Perth men Mate Stipinovich, 49, Karl Whitburn, 45, and Aristides Avlontis, 36, are wanted.

Gambino mobster Frank Camuso busted in NYC construction kickback scheme

Gambino captain Frank Camuso, 59, was busted with ringleader Robert Baselice, who was vice president of a construction management firm that illegally steered property developers to subcontractors he was conspiring with. Baselice gave inside information about competitors’ bids to his co-conspirators and directed subcontractors to raise their offers to amounts that would allow him to pocket kickbacks. A portion of the payoff made its way to companies owned by Camuso “and his family.” Frank 'Calypso' Camuso kept a low profile for years. Camuso previously worked for Joe “Joe the Blond” Giordano, a former Gambino capo and close confidant of John Gotti. In 2019 he was fingered in an illegal dumping operation.

Robert Baselice

The multi-million kickback scheme involved several high-rise construction projects in Manhattan. “Bribery and kickbacks should not be costs of doing business in this City,” DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said in a statement. “This Indictment shows that construction firms in this City must operate with honesty and integrity or face the consequences.”

Notorious German HA Peter Grabe dead

Its 1986, and 13 Hells Angels have been on trial for 18 months in Germany. The allegations included assault, rape, pimping and extortion. It is a mammoth trial of national interest. During closing arguments, the prosecutor picked one out of the crowd of the accused. He calls the giant man a "real horror". He was known by nicknames like 'Zick Zack', 'Jesus' or 'Executor'. Peter Grabe was then vice president of the Hamburg chapter. Grabe, whose full name was Karl-Peter Alfons Wilhelm Grabe, died in hospital at the age of 72 after a lengthy illness. He received the highest sentence of those convicted in the Hamburg Hells Angels trial: seven years in prison.

Gangster Vijay Ganesh Singh loses appeal

Puneet Singh Chhina and Harjinder Singh Sandhu

Former Burnaby resident Vijay Ganesh Singh was convicted in the murder of two men whose bodies were found in the trunk of a car in Pickering, Ontario in 2009. He has lost an appeal of his murder conviction at the Ontario Court of Appeal. Vijay Ganesh Singh is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 23 years. In 2013, a jury found him and co-accused, John Le, guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of kidnapping. It related to the killings of Harjinder Singh Sandhu, 29, and Puneet Singh Chhina, 26, who were bound, shot and stuffed into the trunk of a car abandoned in Pickering on May 5, 2009.

In early 2009, Vijay Ganesh Singh arranged for a 35 kg cocaine shipment from Los Angeles to Toronto. When the shipment arrived, it was actually packages of drywall. The cocaine belonged to one “Ahmun,” who was the leader of the United Nations Gang. Singh needed to recover the cocaine shipment or at least find out who stole it. He suspected Sandhu had been the “jacker” and lured him to his death. Chhina was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The trial judge found little to mitigate sentences, saying that "‘these offences qualify for the description as among the worst group of offences and that Le and Singh are among the worst group of offenders.’” Singh was suspected in the hit on Bikramjit Dhindsa in May 2019.

See ----->Victim of Calgary homicide testified in gangster's murder trial

Jarrod Bacon out on statutory release - Revisited

It was a long road to freedom for Bacon, who had been statutorily released in 2017 on a 14 year sentence after he was convicted in 2012 of attempting to import 100 kg of cocaine. By mid-2017 he was rejailed, then again in December 2018. He failed multiple drug tests. In March 2021 he was released again. The parole board noted Bacon is still considered a significant gangster. "... your accountability and motivation levels as well as your reintegration potential are low,” The parole board had nada good to say about Bacon’s behavior in prison, including that he maintained ties with inmates known to be linked to the Hells Angels and that he had an “ongoing influence in the gang environment.”

They spanked him further for having "cognitive distortions." Jarrod Bacon has avoided new interaction with cops thus far.

New Zealand reels in 3.2 tons of cocaine

New Zealand registered one of the country’s single biggest drugs busts. 81 bales of cocaine weighing 3.2 metric tons were intercepted in the Pacific. The haul is estimated at more than half a billion New Zealand dollars ($318m).

Albainian killer Ëngjëll Brahimi lassoed in Montreal

Ëngjëll Brahimi, 60, has been living in Canada under the name Piro Kota for years. He was convicted in 2000 for murdering a cop and his son. Brahimi killed Astrit Braçe, and his 8-year-old son, Asllan, in an ambush. He was found guilty in absentia of premeditated murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Authorities believe Brahimi left Greece and entered the U.S. before crossing into Canada using a false passport. He eventually obtained citizenship under his false identity of Piro Kota. The Albanian government has requested his extradition.

HA David Lefebvre loses colors

David Lefebvre, 49, of the Montreal chapter, was facing a summary conviction charge of possession of more than 1000 Cialis tablets.

On December 7, the Court of Québec rendered a decision ordering the confiscation and destruction of the jackets of bikers who had been the subject of investigations, but not charged. The jewelry of the Hells Angels was to be returned to their owners because they are rather used as objects of "pride and belonging", and that "membership in a criminal organization is not a crime in itself".

In the end three HA jackets of the Hells Angels belonging to Lefebvre and documents of the biker group will be confiscated and destroyed, while jewelry, patches, a flag, documents, a cell phone and $4,325 will be returned.
See ----->Hells Angel David Lefebvre raided