Flashback to a February 24, 2008 front cover
Chicago Sun-Times titled " The face of the new Mafia":
Lev "Dollar" Stratievsky survived the Holocaust as a boy, came to Chicago and became a millionaire, going from driving a cab to driving a Mercedes.
Flush with success, he would hold court at a table in one of the restaurants he owned and, like any proud father, brag about his son.
"In his youth, Borya was very daring," Stratievsky once said. "He had attempted murders and s---."
The son, Boris "Borya" Stratievsky, also dubbed "Half Dollar," wasn't picky about the method, his father said.
"It's the same for Boris, whether to stab someone with a knife or shoot them," Lev Stratievsky explained.
His son had brains, too.
Boris Stratievsky was "a professor" of money-laundering, washing millions of dollars for shadowy Moscow clients, his father said, according to one transcript of many conversations secretly recorded by the FBI.
The father-and-son team were allegedly part of a growing threat in the Chicago area -- crooks coming from Russia, Poland, the Balkans and other parts of Eastern Europe, eager to make a buck any way they can: stealing luxury cars and heavy construction equipment and shipping them overseas, peddling drugs and guns to Chicago street gangs, committing mortgage fraud and health care fraud, and trafficking in fake IDs and young women.
Where does Boris bank ?:
A Sun-Times review of real estate, court and corporate records found more than 30 companies were associated with one or both of the Stratievskys, who had more than $15 million in property.
Bankrolling many of their mortgages was Broadway Bank, owned by the family of Illinois state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. From 2001 to 2005, before the men were charged, the bank lent more than $10 million to companies tied to Lev and Boris Stratievsky, records show.
Just a reminder, Tony Rezko also banked at Broadway Bank. No word from Senator Dick Durbin on
this one.
