Police Look At Russian Crime -- Bellevue Slaying Prompts Probe

When Redmond Police Sgt. John Miner called the first meeting of a regional Russian Immigrant Crime Task Force two years ago, about 25 detectives and police officers showed up.

Last year, the meeting drew more than 150.

The large turnout, Miner said, is proof the law-enforcement community has begun to pay attention to a small but persistent criminal element within the Russian-speaking community in the Northwest.

So when he heard about the fatal shooting of a Ukrainian businessman in Bellevue on Tuesday night - by another Russian-speaking man who remained at large - Miner was hardly surprised.

"You don't need a crystal ball to see this coming," he said. "It won't be the last."

Certainly, no more than a small percentage of the thousands of refugees and immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who have settled in the Puget Sound area have any involvement with crime.

But those who do are keeping police busy. Miner, who tracks many of the incidents throughout the area, said they include car theft, shoplifting, welfare fraud, false insurance claims and extortion.

In other parts of the U.S., Russian organized crime is a well-documented phenomenon. The August indictment of 25 people in an elaborate $140 million fraud involving fuel taxes in Newark, N.J., for example, linked a group of Russian immigrants to Italian organized-crime families.

No one is claiming the crime in the Northwest approaches that

scale.

Still, as Bellevue Police investigate the Tuesday-night slaying of 29-year-old Alexandre Samoilov, they say they are "taking a long, hard look" at the possibility of a link to organized crime.

Samoilov, who moved to Bellevue's Crossroads area from San Diego about a month ago, was gunned down in the dining room of his family's condominium while his wife and preschool son were upstairs.

Police think Samoilov, a partner in a carwash, was targeted by a man who came over to discuss business. Samoilov, they believe, was not involved with organized crime and intended to start a legitimate business here.

The gunman fled, and witnesses said they saw him get into a small car and speed away.

Samoilov's wife and son are now under police protection. The killer was described as a Russian-speaking man in his early 30s.

Robert Johnson, regional director for the International Rescue Committee, which has helped about 10,000 migrants from the former Soviet Union settle in the Puget Sound area, said large immigrant populations historically have included a criminal element. Often the victims belong to the same community.

"They often prey on the people who don't speak (English) and have a mistrust for police," he said.

Paul Akliti, editor of a Seattle-based Russian-language monthly, The Russian World, said the crime here is tiny compared with what he expects it will be one day.

"All the people who come to America think America has money on the street," said Akliti, who emigrated from Russia about four years ago. "But when some come and they don't find any money on the street, they try to do something to get money."

Akliti said extortion was a way of life in the town of Kishinev, where he used to live. Some of the newcomers, he said, will likely bring such expertise with them to the U.S.

Rimma Kostenyuk, a Ukrainian, owns From Russia With Love, a deli that serves as a gathering place for immigrants in Crossroads. She said she has never been targeted by criminals. Still, she is cautious.

"My husband does come to help me close the store every night," she said.

Others scoffed at the idea of Russian-organized crime in the Northwest.

"I haven't seen mobs of Russians running around the streets of Seattle," said Boris Rubinstein, a Bellevue attorney who represents Russian-speaking clients.

He contends that suggestions of organized crime hurt everyone in the Russian community. Several of his clients, he says, have been stopped by police for no reason, cited after a car accident because they couldn't communicate with police, or investigated unnecessarily for an insurance claim.

"Most of these are recent immigrants just trying to make a living like everyone else," said Rubinstein, who emigrated from Ukraine 17 years ago.

Police say several large auto-theft scams have been broken up in the past couple of years. But they are reluctant to call any of the incidents organized crime.

"Are they connected to some godfather somewhere? No," Miner said. "Are they connected to other individuals? Yes."

A conspirator in a car-theft ring, responsible for more than $400,000 in insurance losses, was sentenced in January to more than five years in prison. Igor Stepchuk, a Ukrainian, was convicted of eight theft-related counts for being part of a group that prosecutors called the "most active car thieves in Western Washington."

It's an "extremely big problem," says Officer Mike Behm of King County Police. He says East European organized crime has been prevalent in southeast King County for several years.

Seattle Times South bureau reporter Nancy Bartley contributed to this report.