NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s most notorious living Russian mobster just wants to go back to the motherland.
Once flush from heroin trafficking, tax fraud schemes and other criminal enterprises, Boris Nayfeld is now 70, fresh out of prison for the third time, divorced and broke. And he is left with few job prospects in his adopted country, at least those in line with his experiences.
“I can’t do nothing,” Nayfeld griped in a thick Russian accent between shots of vodka at a restaurant a few blocks north of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, which has been a haven for immigrants from the former Soviet Union since the 1970s. “Give me a chance to start a new life.”
Nayfeld, who still sports the shaved head, piercing eyes and tattooed, burly physique that made him an intimidating figure in the city’s Russian-speaking neighborhoods for decades, told The Associated Press he longs to move back to a homeland where his skill set connecting businesspeople of all stripes will yield better dividends.
