From The Peopling of New York City
Polish-American organized crime has existed in the United States throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although not as well known as Russian or Italian mafias, the Polish mob has a presence in many urban Polish American communities.
Associates of organized crime with Polish heritage include Richard Kuklinski, a contract killer known in the underworld as "The Iceman."
The Greenpoint Crew
In March 2006, the United States Attorney's Office in New York published a press release covering the indictment of twenty-one members of the so-called Greenpoint Crew, an infamous Polish criminal organization operating out of the heavily Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Led by Ostap Kapelioujnyj and Krzysztof Spryasak, the gang ran its operations of gunrunning, armed robbery, drug trafficking, extortion, car theft, credit card fraud and fencing (reportedly including a stolen 18th century Stradivarius violin) mostly in New York City, as well as having connections back in Poland and Eastern Europe. The gang was not above resorting to violence to achieve their aims, as one video used as evidence shows Kapelioujnyj discussing his threatening to kill a debtor with a golf club after already taking two computers, a camera, and an iPod. [2]
During Prohibition, many Polish-American criminal gangs took advantage of the opportunity to make money through the illegal sale of alcohol.