Rudaj Organization

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The Rudaj Organization is the name given the Albanian mafia in the New York City metro area, so named for the man accused of being its kingpin, Alex Rudaj of Yorktown, New York. The Rudaj Organization, called "The Corporation" by its members, was started in 1993 in Westchester and spread to the Bronx and Queens, law enforcement officials said. Fred Snelling, the agent in charge of the FBI's criminal division in New York, said the organization amounted to a "sixth family."^[1] Prosecutors say the Albanian gang is headed by Alex Rudaj, Nikola Dedaj and an Italian named Nardino Colotti, who had ties to the late Gambino soldier Skinny Phil Loscalzo.^[2]

[edit] Federal Prosecution

On October 26, 2004, the FBI and Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley announced the arrest of the group's alleged boss, Alex Rudaj, and 21 other reputed gang members charged in the indictment. Kelley's office said it believes the indictment is the first federal racketeering case in the United States against an alleged organized crime enterprise run by Albanians. It should be noted that several of the defendants indicted in the case are not Albanian - the organization has soldiers that are Greek, Arab and Italian - but most of the defendants in the case were either native Albanians or first-generation Albanian-Americans.^[3]

During a bail hearing for one of the two dozen people arrested in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Treanor said that the Albanian mob had taken over the operations of the Lucchese family in Astoria, Queens. Rudaj lead an attack in August 2001 on two members of the Lucchese crime family who ran a gambling racket inside a Greek social club called Soccer Fever at 26-80 30th St. in Queens. On August 3, 2001 Rudaj and at least six other men entered the club with guns, beating one of the men in the head with a pistol and chasing others out of the neighborhood by threatening to destroy the building. The Rudaj Organization then opened or began collecting protection payments from at least six Astoria, Queens gambling clubs.^[4] A U.S. federal jury in New York convicted Alex Rudaj and five of his cohorts of a host of racketeering and extortion charges on January 4, 2006.^[5]

[edit] Notes

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