Interview · moment 11 of 23
Brat, Brotherhood, and Modern Vory Business (Drugs, Trafficking, Hacking)
from Russia's Super Mafia · #98
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
4 minGuest
They discuss Russian pride in gangster mythology (citing the film Brother), how the old brutal camp-era mythos has faded into a more corporate style, and the Vory's current global business: heroin trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, and cybercrime as a service.
- 23:35Russian gangsters derive pride from their reputation for brutality, celebrated in films like Brother (Brat) where a Russian criminal shows Americans how much tougher he is.
- 24:41Modern Russian organized crime no longer ranks at the top of the global underworld hierarchy alongside groups like MS-13.
- 25:05Today's Russian mobsters operate with precision and surgical targeting rather than gratuitous over-the-top violence designed to intimidate.
- 25:39Russians are the most globally spread criminal organization because they learned from 1990s failures and now position themselves as a wholesale supplier to local gangs worldwide.
- 26:03Russian criminals operate as a Costco or Cash and Carry for the global underworld, asking local gangs in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa what they need and providing it.
- 26:22A third of all the world's heroin passes through Russia, and they swap heroin for cocaine with Latin American drug gangs to maintain a one-stop-shop model.
- 26:43Beyond trafficking drugs and humans, Russians provide financial services like money laundering through their banking system, which operates as essentially a black hole.
- 27:02Russian hackers crack into police databases in the Baltic States to wipe records of stolen car details and provide cybercrimes as a service to other gangs.