Rudaj Organization - Federal Prosecution

Federal Prosecution

On October 26, 2004, the FBI and Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley announced the arrest of the group's alleged boss, Alex Rudaj, and 21 other reputed mob members charged in the indictment. Kelley's office said it believes the indictment is the first federal racketeering case in the United States against an alleged organized crime enterprise run by Albanians. Kelly neglected to mention a smaller Albanian-Italian drug smuggling operation indicted by federal authorities in Brooklyn since 1981, from which known crime associate was also charged but only received 2 years at sentencing. Several of the defendants indicted in the case are not Albanian - the organization has soldiers that are Greek, Arab and Italian - but most of the defendants in the case were either native Albanians or first-generation Albanian-Americans.

During a bail hearing for one of the two dozen people arrested in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Treanor said that the Albanian mob had taken over the operations of the Lucchese family in Astoria, Queens. Rudaj lead an attack in August 2001 on two Greek associates of the Lucchese crime family who ran a gambling racket inside a Greek social club called Soccer Fever at 26-80 30th St. in Queens. On August 3, 2001 Rudaj and at least six other men entered the club with guns, beating one of the men in the head with a pistol and chasing others out of the neighborhood by threatening to destroy the building.

In court, jurors heard evidence of a gangland showdown between Rudaj and a leader of the Gambino crime family. It happened at a gas station in New Jersey, a few days before the fight at Soccer Fever. Arnold Squitieri, then the acting boss of the Gambino family, had sought a meeting with Rudaj, prosecutors said.

Gambino leader Arnold Squitieri had had enough and wanted a talk with these rogue mobsters. The "sit down" took place at a gas station in a rest area near the New Jersey turnpike. Twenty armed Gambino mobsters accompanied Squitieri. Alex Rudaj on the other hand had only managed to bring six members of his crew. According to undercover FBI agent Joaquin Garcia, who infiltrated the Gambino crime family during this period, Squitieri told Rudaj that the fun was over and that they should stop expanding their operations. The Albanians and Gambinos then pulled out their weapons. Knowing they were outnumbered, the Albanians threatened to blow up the gas station with all of them in it. This ended the discussion, and both groups pulled back.

By 2006 all of the main players involved in this "sit down" were in prison. Rudaj and then personal driver and bodyguard Lumaj including all members of Sixth Family had been picked off the street in October 2004 and charged with a variety of racketeering and gambling charges. After a trial Rudaj and his main lieutenants were all found guilty. In 2006 Rudaj, at that time 38-years-old, was sentenced to 27 years in prison. His rival Arnold Squitieri was convicted in an unrelated racketeering case and was sent to prison for seven years.

"What we have here might be considered a sixth crime family," after the five Mafia organizations — Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese — said Fred Snelling, head of the FBI's criminal division in New York.

To date, over 20 members of the Rudaj organization have been charged with various crimes. Six of its top leaders, including Alex Rudaj himself, have been convicted. Ten more have pled guilty.