Ludwig «Tarzan» Feinberg was easily recognizable: his tall stature of six feet, thick build, long wavy hair. In January 1997, he was stopped by police officers while driving a white Jaguar convertible. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents accompanying the cops then took Feinberg to a station near Porky's, a strip club he owned. He was charged with 30 federal counts, and investigators had questions.
Over a cup of coffee, agents told Feinberg what they knew about his activities in the former Soviet Union, including smuggling helicopters into South America. The investigation lasted three years. According to The New Yorker article, the operation involved six undercover agents and ten confidential informants; a total of 530 phone calls were tapped.
Investigators asked if he had ferried helicopters to South America for a Colombian drug cartel, as well as knowledge of a Soviet submarine. The evidence included a photograph of one at a naval base in St. Petersberg, Florida, with a man who looked like Feinberg posing awkwardly nearby. The indictment stated that he intended to give it to a Colombian drug cartel to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
Feinberg refused to cooperate, but investigators already had enough evidence to arrest him. He was charged with 30 counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, dealing in stolen alcohol, counterfeit money, providing prostitutes to Russian mobsters, and conspiring to buy helicopters and a submarine.
For Feinberg, it was the end of his «American dream». He came to Miami in 1991 from Brooklyn and soon opened Porky's strip club near the international airport. He named it after his favorite movie, a 1981 sex comedy.
Investigators believe Porky's became a center for the Russian Mafia, the Italian Mafia, Colombian drug traffickers and other criminal groups. The crowd likely felt familiar with Feinberg, who has long had dealings with the underworld. In an interview with The New Yorker in 2000, he said he was originally from Ukraine and grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, where he lived until he was 18. After serving in the Israeli navy, he moved to West Berlin, where he engaged in credit card fraud and extortion. In 1979, he moved to the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he worked casual jobs — running a video store and engaging in arson and extortion on behalf of mobster Grisha Roizis.
In 1989, he escaped to Miami, where he again did small jobs — moving, selling furniture and running a flea market called Tarzan's Bargain House. But as he promoted his club, his criminal connections grew. In particular, Juan Almeida offered him connections to South American drug cartels.
Their acquaintance and joint plans are described in the operating statement. Almeida was sharp and calculating — selling expensive autos and boats popular with Miami's «cocaine cowboys». He serviced and stored boats for celebrities and suspected drug dealers at the Fort Apache Marina. When a new Mercedes SL-Class was introduced, clients of Almeida's cartel would order it, and he would then ship the sports cars to Colombia, including Cali.
Almeida was a liaison for the cartels, procuring transportation and recruiting agents. In the 1990s, criminal organizations looked for any connection to capitalize on. Almeida's new partner, Ludwig Feinberg, suggested business connections in Russia.
Between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the situation was chaotic. The Soviet Union, impoverished and riven by internal conflicts, broke up into 15 republics, including Russia. Moscow was in debt, army units — without paychecks — turned in equipment and surrendered to farmers for crops. The state could not pay utility bills. Under such conditions, organized crime flourished, buying up arms and ammunition.
It was the perfect time for Almeida and Feinberg to seek lucrative deals. They had the connections, the money and the chutzpah for big deals. In the early 1990s, they traveled to a motorcycle factory outside Moscow, flying in rented helicopters — whose pilots sometimes got lost and asked for directions. But their role as middlemen for Colombian cartels was expanding.
Feinberg alleged that in 1993 he traveled to Russia again to buy two Kamov KA-32 helicopters — with a payload capacity of about 11,000 pounds. According to the indictment, the helicopters were intended for cocaine suppliers from South America. However, the deal fell through, Russian criminals detained him, and he realized he couldn't leave the country. He made up a story that he was working for Pablo Escobar to save his life.
In Moscow, Almeida said he was met by a motorcade of mobsters, picked up in a Lamborghini SUV, brought to a luxury hotel and introduced to a local crime boss who approved the deal. The boss allowed an AN-124 cargo plane full of helicopters to be sent from Russia.
Over a cup of coffee, agents told Feinberg what they knew about his activities in the former Soviet Union, including smuggling helicopters into South America. The investigation lasted three years. According to The New Yorker article, the operation involved six undercover agents and ten confidential informants; a total of 530 phone calls were tapped.
Investigators asked if he had ferried helicopters to South America for a Colombian drug cartel, as well as knowledge of a Soviet submarine. The evidence included a photograph of one at a naval base in St. Petersberg, Florida, with a man who looked like Feinberg posing awkwardly nearby. The indictment stated that he intended to give it to a Colombian drug cartel to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
Feinberg refused to cooperate, but investigators already had enough evidence to arrest him. He was charged with 30 counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, dealing in stolen alcohol, counterfeit money, providing prostitutes to Russian mobsters, and conspiring to buy helicopters and a submarine.
For Feinberg, it was the end of his «American dream». He came to Miami in 1991 from Brooklyn and soon opened Porky's strip club near the international airport. He named it after his favorite movie, a 1981 sex comedy.
Investigators believe Porky's became a center for the Russian Mafia, the Italian Mafia, Colombian drug traffickers and other criminal groups. The crowd likely felt familiar with Feinberg, who has long had dealings with the underworld. In an interview with The New Yorker in 2000, he said he was originally from Ukraine and grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, where he lived until he was 18. After serving in the Israeli navy, he moved to West Berlin, where he engaged in credit card fraud and extortion. In 1979, he moved to the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he worked casual jobs — running a video store and engaging in arson and extortion on behalf of mobster Grisha Roizis.
In 1989, he escaped to Miami, where he again did small jobs — moving, selling furniture and running a flea market called Tarzan's Bargain House. But as he promoted his club, his criminal connections grew. In particular, Juan Almeida offered him connections to South American drug cartels.
Their acquaintance and joint plans are described in the operating statement. Almeida was sharp and calculating — selling expensive autos and boats popular with Miami's «cocaine cowboys». He serviced and stored boats for celebrities and suspected drug dealers at the Fort Apache Marina. When a new Mercedes SL-Class was introduced, clients of Almeida's cartel would order it, and he would then ship the sports cars to Colombia, including Cali.
Almeida was a liaison for the cartels, procuring transportation and recruiting agents. In the 1990s, criminal organizations looked for any connection to capitalize on. Almeida's new partner, Ludwig Feinberg, suggested business connections in Russia.
Between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the situation was chaotic. The Soviet Union, impoverished and riven by internal conflicts, broke up into 15 republics, including Russia. Moscow was in debt, army units — without paychecks — turned in equipment and surrendered to farmers for crops. The state could not pay utility bills. Under such conditions, organized crime flourished, buying up arms and ammunition.
It was the perfect time for Almeida and Feinberg to seek lucrative deals. They had the connections, the money and the chutzpah for big deals. In the early 1990s, they traveled to a motorcycle factory outside Moscow, flying in rented helicopters — whose pilots sometimes got lost and asked for directions. But their role as middlemen for Colombian cartels was expanding.
Feinberg alleged that in 1993 he traveled to Russia again to buy two Kamov KA-32 helicopters — with a payload capacity of about 11,000 pounds. According to the indictment, the helicopters were intended for cocaine suppliers from South America. However, the deal fell through, Russian criminals detained him, and he realized he couldn't leave the country. He made up a story that he was working for Pablo Escobar to save his life.
In Moscow, Almeida said he was met by a motorcade of mobsters, picked up in a Lamborghini SUV, brought to a luxury hotel and introduced to a local crime boss who approved the deal. The boss allowed an AN-124 cargo plane full of helicopters to be sent from Russia.
The boats and airplanes, while notable, were relatively simple. In the 1990s, submarines began to appear — quiet and virtually undetectable, capable of carrying hundreds of tons of cocaine in a single trip. Colombian authorities didn't discover such a submarine for the first time until 2006, though they were built in the jungle, and the military has found 40-foot-long subs loaded with drugs.
The two-meter-long submarines used for smuggling were often supported by fishing boats. In 2011, U.S. Rear Adm. Fedor and his team twice detained such vessels in the Caribbean, pulling out drugs. Usually, when the submarine was detected, the crew would sink the vessel to escape and the cocaine would sink to the bottom.
«They are very primitive on the inside» — Fedor says. «They're death traps — there are usually four people inside, lots of fuel and containers of cocaine».
Using such submarines seemed impossible for Feinberg and Almeida until a fugitive named Tony Yester showed up. He was wanted for drug dealing and smuggling, and he was changing fake IDs as fast as someone changes milk. He was a distributor for the Medellin cartel linked to Pablo Escobar. In 1980, he arrived in Florida as a Cuban refugee and decided to get rich. He soon became involved with Almeida, and the two developed a common business.
In the fall of 1994, the Cali cartel approached Yester with an idea — to order a huge submarine that could run along the west coast of the United States. Feinberg realized he needed to get permission from the Russian military. After a convincing deal, he took Yester on as an assistant — to choose a suitable ship.
They were not experts on military vessels, but a Russian officer suggested that a Piranha-type submarine about 90 feet long — operated by just three sailors and made of nonmagnetic titanium alloy — would be suitable. However, the cartel wanted a larger model with more range — the diesel-electric Foxrath, three times as long. It could carry 40 tons and travel 11,000 miles underwater, enough to get from Panama to California.
Feinberg took photographs of the submarine in St. Petersburg to show the cartel. He and Yester looked like politicians at a ceremony, waiting to get off.
In 1995, they traveled to Russia. Feinberg lowered the price from $20 million to $6 million and arranged for two Russian admirals and a crew of 20 to run the sub. According to Yester, the cost was about $30 million, and he and his partners got another $5 million. The deal was almost done, and Feinberg planned to smuggle cocaine and have another meeting with Russian criminals in the future. But suddenly it all came crashing down.
By the 1990s, about 30 Russian crime syndicates were operating in the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies created a group to track them, which included the FBI, SBU, DEA and others. They came on the trail of Feinberg, who became the subject of the investigation. Soon his acquaintance Grisha Roizis, who became an FBI informant, introduced them to Alexander Yasevich, who had tapped Feinberg's phone conversations and in 1995 reported on the Russian submarine deal.
As a result, evidence was collected: wiretaps, photographs, witnesses. In January 1997, an indictment was filed. The investigation alleged that Feinberg, Almeida and Yester were trying to buy a Soviet submarine for a drug cartel. The connections, negotiations and price were all recorded.
The investigation lasted three years, the agents managed to infiltrate the circle of suspects, listen to the negotiations and collect evidence. In the end, their version seemed unbelievable: how could they buy a submarine, cross the ocean and get the drugs across the Golden Gate Bridge? Defense lawyers argued that it was old military equipment or a tourist project.
Before trial, Feinberg confessed and testified, cooperating with the investigation. In 2000, he recanted his testimony and Almeida's conviction was overturned. Thereafter, Feinberg lived in Moscow. In 2015, Almeida and Yester admitted to trafficking marijuana in Florida and were sentenced to prison terms, which they served. Both were released in 2022.
Despite the setbacks, the idea of using submarines to smuggle remained attractive. In 2021, Almeida posted a mock submarine sale announcement on Instagram, «People, stop asking — I'm sold out» — he wrote, laughing.
