Evsei Borisovich Agron ( rus, Евсей Борисович Агрон, r=Yevsei Borisovich Agron; 25 January 1932 – 4 May 1985) was boss of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Russian mafia Russian organized crime or Russian mafia (, ), otherwise known as Bratva (), is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. The initialism OPG is Organized Criminal (''prestupnaya'' in Russian) ...

during the 1970s and 1980s. Known for his cruelty, he was called the "Godfather" of the Russian American mafia. Born in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, of Jewish origins, Agron immigrated to the

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in 1975. He swiftly gained control of criminal operations among the

Soviet Jews The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "For ...

living in

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 ...

. Agron organized a motor fuel racket which would earn millions, if not billions, through fuel tax fraud. This type of fraud, which involved selling tax-free home heating oil as diesel fuel, eventually cost the state of New Jersey alone an estimated $1 billion annually in lost tax revenues. He ran many of his operations out of the El Caribe club, which was part-owned by

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lawyer Michael Cohen. Other mobsters closed in on the fuel racket, and a rival organization began expanding its own criminal operations under Boris Goldberg, who, in 1989, would be charged under the

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(RICO) for drug trafficking, armed robbery, extortion, arms dealing and attempted murder. Agron died after being shot twice in the head outside his Brooklyn apartment in May 1985, at the age of 53. He was succeeded by

Marat Balagula Marat Yakovlevich Balagula (russian: Мара́т Я́ковлевич Балагула; 8 September 1943 – 19 December 2019) was a Jewish-American organized crime figure, crime boss, and close associate of the Lucchese crime family and Colom ...

as leader of the Russian mob in the United States. In 2018,

Heather Digby Parton Digby is the short name of American political blogger Heather Digby Parton from Santa Monica, California who founded the blog Hullabaloo. She has been called one of the "leading and most admired commentators" of the liberal/progressive blogosphe ...

wrote in ''

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'' that " alagulawas suspected of killing Agron".

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Further reading