Maximum Expansion of Armenian Organized Crime

Inspired by watching too many episodes of The Shield, the only show I know of to use the phrase "Armenian Mob", on a regular basis.

So, what would be the POD and timeline necessary for an "Armenian Mafia"-type organization to be built up, which would have international influence similar to, say, the Triads, Colombian cartels, Yakuza, etc? I would say this would be a bit more tricky, given how the world's population of Armenians is smaller than the number of Chinese, Colombians, or Japanese, so how would this happen?

Extra points to anybody who can make this happen without a flamewar in this thread.
 
Does Armenia have a tradition of organized crime like the Mafia, Triads, or Yakuza, which all originated before the 19th century?
 
Does Armenia have a tradition of organized crime like the Mafia, Triads, or Yakuza, which all originated before the 19th century?
Nope, but they do have tradition of "parallel government", coming from being a minority community in hostile environment (similar to Jewish communities of the day). Jews gave generation of spectacular criminals to America (Siegel, Lansky, Buhgalter, list goes on and on). Why couldn't Armenians? They are more acceptive of violence than Jews, there was plenty of violent Armenian criminals in former USSR and they chaired mighty powerful criminal assotiations.
 
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