Evsei Agron

Evsei Borisovich Agron (; ; 25 January 1932 – 4 May 1985) was a Soviet-American mobster and boss of New York City's Russian mafia during the 1970s and 1980s. Known for his cruelty, he was called the "Godfather" of the Russian American mafia.

Criminal career Born in Leningrad, of Jewish origins, Agron was a pickpocket. He served seven years in a Soviet prison camp and emerged as a vor. Agron was expelled from the vor brotherhood, however, for failure to pay a gambling debt. He left the Soviet Union in 1971 and controlled a large prostitution and gambling ring in Hamburg, West Germany. Many of Agron's operations were headquartered out of the El Caribe club, which was part-owned by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Another important ally of Agron was Ronald Greenwald, a politically connected rabbi who allegedly helped Agron obtain a U.S. visa and often hosted meetings with Agron in the office of his commodities firm in Lower Manhattan.

Agron also 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. 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 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for drug trafficking, armed robbery, extortion, arms dealing and attempted murder.

In January 1984, Agron survived a second assassination attempt when he was shot twice in the face and neck as he ascended a gentle slope from the garage in the basement of his home on 100 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. He was operated on at Coney Island Hospital by Dr. Larissa Blinkin, who was unable to remove the bullets lodged in Agron's body but did save his life. Agron was left paralyzed on one side of his face. He was succeeded by Marat Balagula as leader of the Russian mob in the United States. After emigrating in 1982, Agron began a relationship with his civil partner, former Soviet singer Maya Rozova (Rosenweiss). In 1984, Rozova gave birth to their son Gregory, who later served in the US Army in the Iraq War, was wounded, and awarded the Purple Heart. After demobilization, Gregory received a law degree and lived in the state of California.

Evsei Agron's life story was the subject of the book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, written by American journalist Robert I. Friedman. Following Agron's death, Rozova disputed many of the claims made in the book about Agron's criminal activities.