Polish-American organized crime

The Philadelphia Polish Mob, known as the Kielbasa Posse, are a Polish American organized crime group operating from the Port Richmond area in Philadelphia. Named after the Polish word for sausage, the gang is made up of Polish immigrants living in Port Richmond, Kensington, North Philadelphia, Northeast Philly, Bucks County, and South Jersey, as well as second-generation Polish Americans.

The gang moved into territory occupied by Irish, Russian, and Italian Mafia outfits, namely the trafficking and dealing of Ecstasy, and are said to have moved into bookmaking and loansharking operations as well. They would meet several times a week at a local Polish bar. Many residents in the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia can tell of multiple accounts where these so-called gang members have caused trouble. They do not have a good relationship with the K&A Gang who controls most of Northeast Philly, because the Northeast is predominantly Irish. According to local residents, they are not well known and the older Polish residents of the neighborhood choose to ignore the existence of the gang.[1]

In March 2006, the United States Attorney's Office in New York City published a press release covering the indictment of twenty-one members of the so-called Greenpoint Crew, an infamous Polish criminal organization operating out of the heavily Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Led by Ostap Kapelioujnyj and Krzysztof Sprysak, Kuzmazerilli the gang ran its operations of gunrunning, armed robbery, drug trafficking, extortion, car theft, credit card fraud and fencing (reportedly including a stolen 18th century Stradivarius violin) mostly in New York City, as well as having connections back in Poland and Eastern Europe. The gang was not above resorting to violence to achieve their aims, as one video used as evidence shows Kapelioujnyj discussing his threatening to kill a debtor with a golf club after already taking two computers, a camera, and an iPod.[2]