The Last Boss of Brighton: Boris "Biba" Nayfeld and the Rise of the Russian Mob in America

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And the Spurs defender was also on hand to clear an Aaron Connolly's effort off the line in stoppage time when the Republic of Ireland international looked destined to score. I remembered how he, too, had been able to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Babel in the original Russian.

The Last Boss of Brighton by Douglas Century - Scribd The Last Boss of Brighton by Douglas Century - Scribd

As he recounts, in granular detail, crimes ranging from pickpocketing to violent hold-ups to a massive gas-tax swindling scheme that netted him millions, Nayfeld gives us a tour of a parallel criminal world, with all its attendant rules and "ethics. One morning in 2019, while staying at Boris’s sprawling house in Staten Island, I awoke to find him whipping up some scrambled eggs and lox and blini.

Under Agron’s mentorship, Nayfeld took part in a stunning variety of scams, from passing counterfeit Russian coins to recent immigrants to insurance fraud, eventually hitting a real jackpot with fuel-tax evasion.

The Last Boss of Brighton – HarperCollins The Last Boss of Brighton – HarperCollins

These were guys who’d survived in a totalitarian state that normalized illegal activity, one that viewed crime as a form of anti-communist rebellion and even elevated it to an art form. Nayfeld is wisely allowed to tell the tale in his own words for the most part, with Century only popping up occasionally to point out where these apparently candid reminiscences part company from other accounts. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI.Well into their golden years, in retirement in Chicago and Miami Beach, I remember them reading Der Morgen Freiheit (“The Morning Freedom”), the far-left Yiddish-language newspaper published daily in New York City.

The Last Boss of Brighton by Douglas Century | Open Library The Last Boss of Brighton by Douglas Century | Open Library

He said: "For Brighton we can still improve [without them] and we can bring in other good players with the transfer market. Century, the author of Hunting El Chapo and other bestselling true-crime books, thrillingly chronicles Nayfeld’s criminal career in the Soviet Union, where stealing from the state was a main source of illicit income.As you’ll read, Boris Nayfeld and his partners were among the first to spot and exploit the untold fortunes to be made in the economic chaos after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union began its inexorable collapse.