Russian Mob Boss Arrested In U.S.

The reputed top Russian mob boss in the United States was arrested Thursday for allegedly masterminding a $3.5 million extortion scheme.

Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, 55, was the target of an unprecedented joint effort by the FBI and Russian authorities.

Ivankov, known as a courtly, intellectual mobster, spent a decade in a Siberian prison for crimes ranging from robbery to drug trafficking. Eight others are charged with him in the extortion plot.

FBI Assistant Director Jim Kallstrom called Ivankov’s capture “the most important arrest ever made in the war against Russian organized crime in the United States.”

Ivankov, who slipped into the United States on a doctored passport three years ago, came to Brooklyn’s “Little Odessa” to oversee Russian organized crime activities in America, authorities said.