"These are battle-hardened motherfuckers," says one underworld insider, who couldn't offer many details about the Colonel, including his real name. "The Colonel just brought these guys over from Russia or Ukraine. They came through Brighton Beach [Brooklyn]."

The new recruits include veterans of the bloody war in Chechnya, former military Special Forces soldiers and former operatives of the Federal Security Bureau, which succeeded the KGB.

"These guys are highly skilled killers," the source says. "Surveillance. Explosives. Computers. Weapons. Smart and violent."

The Colonel and his crew are said to operate in Northeast Philly, Bucks County and central New Jersey but have ties to Russian drug dealers in Ohio and Nevada and to Russian mobsters in New York and Europe. They're heavily involved in traditional organized criminal activities like extorting Russian-owned businesses, insurance fraud, drugs and prostitution. But his expanding rackets are said to include stock fraud, schemes involving gas and oil companies, and money laundering. Proceeds from these crimes are allegedly reinvested in legitimate fronts like construction, real estate and racehorses.

"They move from group to group depending on the type of crime they want to commit," says a state organized-crime investigator, explaining how this group is structured differently than traditional mob families. "But there are a few Russian crime groups, or crime families. These gangs are highly structured with a boss, sub-bosses, crew chiefs, etc. And we're starting to see a lot more of these so-called Russian mafia gangs in this area."

A source who has dealt with the Northeast Philly mobsters says, "They will work with any criminal they have to, to make money. Biker gangs. The Mafia. Black street gangs. Columbian and Dominican drug cartels. But they don't trust anyone. And they will kill you in a New York minute if a deal goes south. They're serious people."

It has been an open secret for several years now that drug dealers catering to the well-heeled patrons of bars and restaurants in Old City and Center City have been able to evade detection by the police. They're discreet, rarely get violent and are always on call.

"My dealers were really good at serving clients," says "Cindy," a successful twentysomething businesswoman and artist who worked in Center City for several years.

Now recovered and living far from Philadelphia, Cindy still has many successful friends who say it's still just as easy to score coke and pot in the clubs here. Cindy says accessibility led to her cocaine addiction.

"It was like going to a flea market," she recalls. "You go into the bathroom and the dealers are there giving out samples."

Cindy recalls one late-night Rittenhouse Square club where a bartender clad in overalls would hook her up with drugs. "People at the bar would say to the bartender, 'Hey, I need some coke.' He'd say, 'Go over to that table. That guy's got some.' I would go to him all the time when I wanted to score."

Dealers are well-known and circulate from club to restaurant to club.

"If I couldn't find [my dealer] at one place, he would be next door in the other restaurant or down Walnut Street inside another place," she says. "Everybody knows the routine. The bartender or the bouncer will hook you up. Or you'll find someone in the bathroom, dealing next to a stall where somebody else is ralphing into the toilet 'cause they had too much to drink."

The dealers also show up at private parties and members-only clubs frequented by yuppies, wealthy twentysomethings and restaurant staffers looking to party after hours.

"You're in a party and everybody is wearing Gucci," Cindy explains. "But there's one black guy in a white Hanes undershirt and everybody is hanging around him. He's the dealer for the party."

Another young woman says her boyfriend, a high-ranking law enforcement official, has stopped going to five area and restaurant and nightclubs with her because the drug use is so blatant. Both she and Cindy tell City Paper that three out of the four best-known drug dealers who service the clubs are black, and a fourth, a waiter at a very well-known and expensive Philadelphia restaurant, is a South Philly Italian who acts like he's mobbed up.

"I liked Level One," Cindy says, referring to her dealer by his street name. "It sounds funny. I don't miss the cocaine, but I do miss seeing him. Except for the drugs, nice guy."