Leonid Belov

**Leonid Belov** (1952-2017), was a Russian mafia boss in New York City from the 1980s to fall of 2017. He was head of the Belov bratva.

## Coming to America

Belov came to America in the early-mid 1980s to get a piece of the "American dream" with some of his close friends. He started working with Richard Kuklinski with the Gambino crime family. He soon began his own small gang of Russian mobsters in the late 1980s. The gang soon controlled major parts of Boston, South Beach and Brighton Beach in the 1990s. He allied himself with major prostitution madame Delilah Wilson in 2002. By 2005, he had become the biggest Russian mafia boss on the Eastern Seaboard; with huge rackets in extortion, smuggling, prostitution, hit contracts, theft, counterfeiting, bookmaking, illegal gambling and money laundering. From time to time, he would have a rivalry with another New York Russian mafia boss Viggo T and African-American mobster Lucas Cornell.

## Erikson-Belov war

After the imprisonment of his close ally Delilah Wilson in 2017 due to a war with Erichsburg mafia boss Bugsy Erikson, as retaliation, he ordered a hit on one of Erikson's capos and several of his men in Harlem. He then ordered the death of a close childhood friend of Erikson in Erichsburg. These two events set off a war with Erikson's still developing-less powerful New York crews, the Gambino crime family and the Belov bratva.

### Brighton Beach bombing

In February of 2017, Erikson ordered several of his men to bomb Belov's headquarters in Brighton Beach. The bombing narrowly missed Belov because it prematurely went off while he was in his car down the street. The bombing killed two of Belov's lieutenants and several other mobsters and injured several civilians. As retaliation for the bombing, Belov ordered a hit on a key enforcers for the Erikson crime syndicate's Little Italy crew in New York, the family's Southside Chicago crew and Viggo T's main bookmaker.

## Death

After a few months, Erikson had grown tired of the war and had decided to end it for good. Erikson had wanted to kill Belov personally, but had decided that he couldn't do it alone because of the extent of Belov's bodyguards.

At 6:34 pm on April 23, Belov and his bodyguards were held up at his rebuilt and reinforced headquarters with a total of 27 men. Erikson arrived with hitman Brett Ward and Tarasov hitman John Reeves, each armed with Walther P99, UMP 45 with suppressors, AN/PVS-14 night sights, EOTech XPS2 holosights, and SureFire M900 foregrips.

They first went through a back entrance in a dark alley, killing several of his men in the alley and upon entering the complex. An alarm was raised and Belov called for a helicopter to escape and he and multiple guards ran up to the roof to wait. As they were waiting, the three men quickly dispatched his men. As the helicopter was about to land, the three men came up from behind the guards and killed them each with bullets to the back. Then, a gunner on the helicopter quickly started firing at the men so that Belov could escape, and as one of his guards on the helicopter was reaching to help him onto the helicopter, Reeves quickly shot Belov several times with his UMP45 and then Brett and Erikson started firing back at the helicopter, killing one of the pilots and the gunner, and wounding the other pilot and damaging the controls, causing the pilot to lose control as he was trying to escape and perish as the helicopter crashed. They then went up to Belov, still clinging to life, the three men went up to him and emptied their P99s into him.

### Aftermath

After the hit, Tarasov ordered Reeves to eliminate the remaining of Belov's leadership and their supporters to eliminate all remaining resistance. Then, Tarasov quickly began grabbing Belov's former rackets and territories, and so did Erikson, Cornell and the Gambinos.