Organized Crime

Two years ago, when the FBI announced the arrest of an accused drug dealer here with alleged organized-crime connections, Breckinridge L. Willcox, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, rejected the idea that the man was a mobster."

Baltimore is among the regions hardest-hit by organized retail crime, a growing national problem in which gangs steal and sell goods, a retail trade group reported Tuesday. A survey by the National Retail Federation shows that almost no retailer is immune, whether the outlets are department or big-box stores, discounters, drugstores, supermarkets, restaurants or specialty chains. The crimes have also become more violent, the survey noted. "Criminals have become more desperate and brazen in their efforts, stopping at nothing to get their hands on large quantities of merchandise," Rich Mellor, NRF vice president of loss prevention, said in a statement.

MOSCOW -- Russia's biggest commercial banks plan to shut down today to protest the murder of one of the most powerful banking executives in Russia.Nikolai Likhachev, who had been the chairman of the Russian Agricultural Bank, was shot last Thursday by two gunmen at the entrance to his apartment house.The murderers got away, and the police say they have no leads.The slaying has set off a storm in Russian banking circles. Leaders of the top commercial banks said yesterday that something has to be done to stop organized crime before it devours Russia.

Looking tired and resigned, Shaneka Penix stood before U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles in his Baltimore courtroom yesterday morning and quietly asked for mercy. "I believe I deserve a second chance," she said. Penix was caught selling crack cocaine in August and September of last year. It was her first serious infraction. But because of her affiliation with the Maryland division of a drug gang known as the Tree Top Piru Bloods, she was charged and convicted of conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, or RICO.

ATLANTA -- Organized retail theft is on the rise, according to an industry survey. More than three-quarters of retailers said their stores had been hit by crime rings in the past year, the National Retail Federation said yesterday. The federation surveyed 99 senior loss-prevention executives across all sectors of the retail industry. The trade group also found that 71 percent of retail respondents saw a boost in organized theft, up significantly from a similar survey in 2006, when 48 percent of retailers experienced an uptick.

BARCELONA -- With less than a week remaining before th European Community officially eliminates its internal border controls, the frontiers are already humming with a deadly commerce that no one foresaw when the Common Market was launched a generation ago.As the EC liberalizes its trade policies to grease the wheels of legitimate trade, a rogue's gallery of organized crime is moving in on the action.Drawn by open commercial frontiers in the West -- and exploiting political chaos in the former Communist East and the Third World -- international drug rings dealing in heroin and cocaine have begun a wave of terror that crime experts across the continent say is spinning out of control.

A joint federal-city task force is investigating the September FTC slayings of two businessmen killed in a drive-by shooting outside the offices of a Broening Highway warehouse firm, the U.S. attorney's office confirmed yesterday.Faced with the possibility that the slayings are the result of an interstate murder-for-hire conspiracy, FBI agents were called into the homicide investigation about a month after John R. Shotto and Raymond Nicholson were gunned down, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter M. Semel.

WHEN MOSCOW POLICE found Alexei Butenko's body, the 26-year-old banker's throat had been cut, his cheeks sliced open and his abdomen perforated with stab wounds. While investigation is continuing, there is little doubt about the outcome: he was another victim of growing mob violence in the former Soviet Union.Contract killings of anyone dealing with money -- ranging from bankers and entrepreneurs to television executives -- has become commonplace in Russia as mobsters try to take over privatized businesses or hit rivals' companies.

The County Council is set to approve a bill regulating commercial bingo, despite warnings from the county administration that changes thecouncil has made to the bill might encourage organized crime to infiltrate bingo parlors.Council Chairman David G. Boschert, D-Crownsville, said he will recommend allowing a new county Amusement LicenseCommission to study the changes between the time the council approves the bill and the date the changes are implemented. The amendments, which would increase prize winnings, were added to the bill last month by council members.

In a high-profile case pointing to ties between local Communist Party officials and organized crime, a Chinese court sentenced more than a dozen key officials in the country's fifth-largest city, official media reported today. Authorities sentenced Mu Suixin, the former mayor of Shenyang, to death with a two-year reprieve, a sentence that is usually commuted to life in prison. Shenyang's vice mayor, Ma Xiangdong, was sentenced to death in the same case, state-run China Central Television reported.

WASHINGTON - A Senate committee heard appeals yesterday for the creation of a federal task force to combat polygamist sects that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described as sophisticated organized crime rings. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office has investigated a sect in Texas, was among those backing legislation sponsored by Reid, a Nevada Democrat. The bill would establish a task force in the U.S. Department of Justice and assist victims of polygamist groups. The hearing, which included testimony from two former sect members, spotlighted the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS)

Amy Jo Lyons does not appear easily daunted. As the new chief of the FBI's Baltimore office - which oversees Maryland and Delaware - Lyons is only too aware of the devastating crime rate of the area's biggest city, one of the worst in the country. "It's a huge task," Lyons said yesterday as her third week at the helm of the regional office drew to a close. "I see there's a great need for strong law enforcement, and we're ready to fill it, along with our partners. It means there's a calling for us to be here."

MITCHELL MARS, 55 Mob prosecutor Federal prosecutor Mitchell A. Mars, who sent Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and other big-name mobsters to prison, died Tuesday. He had been battling lung cancer since shortly after last year's Operation Family Secrets trial, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago said. The trial ended in September with the conviction of Lombardo and other top organized crime figures. Mr. Mars led the organized crime unit in the U.S. attorney's office for 15 years and won convictions against mobsters Albert Tocco and Rocky Infelice, Cicero town President Betty Loren-Maltese and others.

A third-generation dockworker from Baltimore was elected president of the International Longshoremen's Association yesterday - the largest union of port workers in North America. Richard P. Hughes Jr., who had been executive vice president of the New York-based union since 2005, replaces John Bowers, who held the post for two decades. The 73-year-old Hughes - the first Longshoreman from Baltimore to hold the top post - was selected in a voice vote at the ILA's quadrennial convention in Florida.

CHICAGO -- For anyone who has grown complacent about the danger of terrorism, the incidents in London and Glasgow, Scotland, were supposed to provide a jolt of reality. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy put it, "these foiled attacks are best understood as new rounds in a long, global war, provoked by the challenge of radical Islam." Here was proof that the jihadists are still out there, ready to strike at the moment of their choosing. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff clearly agrees.

ATLANTA -- Organized retail theft is on the rise, according to an industry survey. More than three-quarters of retailers said their stores had been hit by crime rings in the past year, the National Retail Federation said yesterday. The federation surveyed 99 senior loss-prevention executives across all sectors of the retail industry. The trade group also found that 71 percent of retail respondents saw a boost in organized theft, up significantly from a similar survey in 2006, when 48 percent of retailers experienced an uptick.

JUST days before Russian figure skating queen Maria Buturskaya was to defend her world championship in December, someone firebombed her new BMW. No wonder her shaky performance cost her the title. Two weeks earlier, Alexander Kurtiyan, the $1-million midfielder on a St. Petersburg soccer club, was badly beaten near his home. Those two athletes were lucky. Since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, more than a dozen high-profile Russian sports figures -- boxers, umpires, ice hockey stars, club managers and promoters -- have been murdered.

LOS ANGELES -- Death Row Records, the most successful rap label in the country since its founding in 1992, is under investigation by the federal government, which is trying to determine whether Death Row is being run as a criminal enterprise.Sources said that authorities suspect the rap label is tied somehow to organized crime in New York and Chicago.It is increasingly apparent that the company faces even more serious problems than the recent jailing of company founder and owner Marion "Suge" Knight.

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico -- The top police officer in this unhinged border city has 300 openings on a 600-member police force, and his fearful greeting gave a big clue about why. "Please, please don't use my name or take a photograph," the interim chief begged. One police chief was killed last year, a second quit in the spring, and no one else appears brave, or foolhardy, enough to work this side of the law in Nuevo Laredo. Mexican President Vicente Fox quietly withdrew the federal police that he had dispatched here with great fanfare last year, leaving the city virtually unprotected in a smuggling war that has claimed 170 lives since January.

The new chief of the FBI's Baltimore office is a 23-year veteran who worked on cases including the infamous shoe-bomber incident and organized crime and is coming from the agency's Albany, N.Y., office, officials confirmed yesterday. William D. Chase, 49, will oversee a FBI office of some 180 agents in Woodlawn, and about 200 administrative personnel in Maryland and Delaware. In an interview yesterday, Chase, who will be special agent in charge, described the move as a natural progression from one of the FBI's smaller offices to one of its largest.