The Potato Bag Gang, a manifestation of the Odessa mafia, was a gang of
con artists from
Odessa that operated in New York City's Soviet émigré community in the
Brighton Beach
Brighton Beach is a neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, within the greater Coney Island area along the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island proper at Ocean Parkway to the ...
area of
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in the mid-1970s.
Criminal activity
Posing as
merchant sailors, they would offer to sell victims bags full of antique gold rubles for thousands of dollars each. In reality, only the sample coin was authentic, and the bags were full of
potatoes.
See also
*
Ukrainian mafia
The Ukrainian mafia is a type of criminal organization with origins in Ukraine. Such organizations are regarded as one of the most influential types of organized crime coming out of the former USSR, including also the Russian mafia, the Georgian ...
*
Russian mafia
References
Further reading
*
Fraud in the United States
Former gangs in New York City
1970s in New York City
1970s crimes in New York City
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