MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Prosecutor's Office confirmed on Friday the death of Vyacheslav Ivankov, a notorious crime boss known as Yaponchik (Little Japanese).

It said Vyacheslav Ivankov had died in a Moscow hospital.

The crime boss, who had kept a low profile since his 2005 acquittal by the Russian Supreme Court on 1992 murder charges, was hospitalized in July after he was wounded in a shooting in Moscow.

He was shot in the abdomen by snipers when he was coming out of a cafe in northern Moscow on July 29.

In June 2004, the General Prosecutor's Office filed a request asking the United States to extradite Ivankov to Russia. The request was granted, and Ivankov was freed from a U.S. jail on July 11, 2004, and handed over to immigration authorities.

Ivankov served almost 10 years in the Allenwood high-security prison in Pennsylvania for extorting $3.5 million from two Russian immigrants.