The Underworld Podcast

When gunmen ambushed a Mexican-Chinese businessman outside his Guatemala City casino in 2016, few outside the DEA paid much attention. But the shootout presaged the downfall of a man who, feds would later say, hadn’t just made a tidy living out of money laundering, but pioneered it. But Xizhi Li, who grew up in the border town of Mexicali, was just one of a new army of Chinese money launderers who, tooled with millennia of underground banking skills, and China’s own economic policies, have become the go-to guys for Latin American cartels looking to wash their dirty cash. And with fentanyl flooding America’s streets, their work is becoming deadlier by the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Something about Bum Farto, Key West’s fire chief, stunk. And it wasn’t just his red suits, bling and lime green company car. By the early 70s Florida’s farthest-flung outpost was a lawless drug enclave. And Bum was smack bang in its center. ((NOTE: This isn't just our best episode, it might be the podcast episode ever, in the history of podcasts.)) When the state’s governor dispatched a multi-agency task force to Key West, however, they stumbled on something far darker than an errant Farto. Out poured a world of murder, mafiosi and massive shipments. What happened next remains a mystery to this day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia fought a guerrilla war against Colombia’s government - as well as against right wing militias and drug cartels - for over four decades before signing a peace treaty in 2016 and then dissolving in 2017, though splinter faction known as The Dissidents still prowls the jungles. As the FARC were coming up, another violent group in Colombia hellbent on taking over territory was also growing: the country’s infamous drug cartels. In this episode, we’re joined by longtime cartel correspondent and frequent guest, author Toby Muse to detail the history of the FARC and what exactly was their role in Colombia’s cocaine trade. Toby is the author of Kilo: Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Tren de Aragua grew out of disastrous regime policies to give gang leaders more power in prisons. Its mysterious leader, Niño Guerrero, soon controlled an entire facility, and installed a prison bar, a nightclub—and even a zoo. More state bungling allowed the Tren to take over entire city neighbourhoods unchallenged. So when Venezuela’s economy plummeted and hundreds of thousands fled the nation, it became a key player in the booming migrant smuggling trade, spreading into neighboring Latin American states. Now the Tren is in the US. But is there really a full-scale invasion, as media are beginning to say? We unpick the fact and fiction of this dangerous new group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the chaos of 1970’s New York, it took a lot to shock the city. But the Westies managed to leave quite the impression. Dubbed the last of the Irish mob despite being more like an anarchic gang, they terrorized the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, garnering headlines due to their penchant for daytime hits and chopping up their victims bodies. They even managed to attract the attention of New York’s five mafia families, who took notice of their numerous hits and started contracting out to them. In less than a decade though, things would get a little too messy, and they would tear themselves apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This year, the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert has been rocked by the death of 16-year-old Preston Lord, at the hands of a group calling themselves the ‘Gilbert Goons,’ jocks and hicks combining forces to unleash violence on the city’s streets. The craziest thing? This happened before. And back then, the group’s godfather was none other than Sammy the Bull, Gambino consigliere turned super-snitch. The 90s are well and truly back in fashion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent years, Sebastian Marset has emerged as the first narco kingpin out of Uruguay. He rose from a mid-level weed dealer to an international cartel boss in less than 10 years, even with half that time being spent in prison, pioneering Latin America's southern route; trafficking blow from Bolivia to Paraguay and Uruguay, and then Europe, where he's allegedly behind record-breaking multi-ton busts from Germany to Belgium. He’s a master at money laundering, setting up front companies, and winning over everyone from high ranking politicians to massive criminal organizations like the 'Ndranghetta and Brazilian gang First Command of the Capital. He also always seems to be one step ahead of law enforcement, and travels under numerous alias with fake documents. There's just one little flaw in his master plans...he's obsessed with soccer. So obsessed, he keeps buying teams and putting himself in the game as a player despite being wanted by nearly half a dozen countries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Mohammed Alaa Allawi, a former US military interpreter, moved to Texas in 2012, selling weed was a side hustle. But when a company asked him to design a website, the young Iraqi soon realised his American dream was better forged online. Soon Allawi was making millions on the dark web, selling counterfeit pills with precursors from China—including the deadly opioid fentanyl. When a Marine OD’d on the gear, the heat on Allawi intensified. Before long he was trapped in a spectacular multiagency sting. FOR NEW MERCH: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bombshell out of Mexico, El Mayo (!!!!!) is in US federal custody after arriving on a small private plan alongside El Chapo's son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez. What. The Hell. Is going on. How does the most elusive, powerful narco kingpin in Mexico's history, whose avoided arrest for decades and operated like a ghost in the shadows, end up being gift-wrapped for feds? Alongside 1/4 of Los Chapitos? In this hastily thrown together episode, we try to get to the bottom of exactly what's known, what isn't known, and what is actually happening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Nelson Mandela and the ANC delivered South Africa from Apartheid in the 90s, hopes were high that the country could become a beacon of freedom and fairness. A generation later, those dreams lie in tatters. Elites have plundered state coffers to the tune of billions, mines have been taken over by illegal “chancers,” and the ghettoes of South Africa’s largest city, Cape Town, are suffering levels of violence unseen since segregation. Left with few opportunities, corrupt cops and hundreds of gangs, locals have turned to private security firms, the country’s new boom trade. Others have thrown up roadblocks and christened whip-wielding vigilante groups, as the country descends into ever more hellish levels of organized crime. NEW MERCH: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Walker already had a huge rap sheet in his native Liverpool before 2018, when he took off across Europe and through the Sahara Desert into Sierra Leone - posting on social media the whole time. There he crafted a new life as a saviour of Freetown’s slums. But is there another, darker motive for Walker’s second act? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With El Chapo locked up in a supermax prison and never going home, there's been a battle to maintain the power of his feared Sinaloa cartel. Many thought his sons, groomed to take his place, would falter. Seen mostly as spoiled rich kid "narco juniors" who possessed neither the intelligence nor the strength to outmaneuver older, more experienced druglords, the men known as Los Chapitos have surprised many by turning their faction of the cartel into a ruthless powerhouse pumping out fentanyl into the US. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the mid 90's, the Quebec Hells Angels made an offer to every drug trafficking organization in Montreal: buy from us or die. The Rock Machine motorcycle club refused to bend the knee, allying with a secretive group of business owner drug dealer money launderers known as the Dark Circle. What followed was 8 years of unparalleled violence, resulting in over 160 killed and turning the streets of Montreal into a war zone. Meanwhile, the Hells Angels and their leader Mom Boucher kept up their war on the authorities and sought to monopolize the entire drug market, raking in hundreds of millions in the process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years the Pacific region, and its tiny, tropical nations, steered clear of the global meth and cocaine trade. But politics, war and wild profit margins have pushed ships and planes out from Latin America to Australia across a new ‘drug highway.’ The phenomenon is prompting mass murder, crippling governments, and creating a wave of addiction where none existed. Locals are getting corrupted into becoming cartel ‘doors.’ And local gang underworlds have been upended, uprooted and hunted down like never before. Unless something changes, it'll be Paradise Lost. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club first chapter emerged in the US in the 1940's but didn't reach Canada until 1977. Less than 20 years later, they would be neck deep in the bloodiest motorcycle gang war ever fought as the Quebec chapter sought to monopolize the cocaine trade, utilizing car bombs and death squads to turn the city of Montreal into a war zone. Led by the psychotic and brilliant Maurice "Mom" Boucher, the Hells got so powerful they not only took on any and all rival biker gangs and criminal organizations, but the state itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 2019, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has smashed the country’s two main gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, throwing almost 80,000 people into megaprisons and implementing a harsh but effective “state of exception,” aka martial law. Murder rates have plummeted and, for the first time in years, Salvadorans can live without the fear of violence, extortion, or death. But the sneaker-wearing “world’s coolest dictator” has also gerrymandered El Salvador’s political map, silenced the press, and packed out the judiciary with sycophants and wallflowers. And as human rights NGOs cry foul, Bukele has gone full-tilt, telling citizens not to call him a dictator, but a “philosopher king.” Is his fragile peace about to come crashing down? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When hitmen shot dead Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver last June, Canadian cops blamed the government of India’s strongman leader Narendra Modi. Subsequent assassination plots in NYC, the UK and Germany have pointed at two men. One is India’s most notorious mobster. The other is its most decorated spy, a man whose undercover ops—and willingness to dip into the underworld—has earned him the nickname “India’s James Bond.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Louis Sarcella might be one of the most corrupt NYPD detectives ever, though he was once heralded as a master at getting confessions on homicides. A slick dressing, tough talking cigar smoker who could bench 400 pounds, he got such a good reputation that he was invited on the Dr. Phil show. But while he was waging a war on the streets, his uncle, Nicky Black Grancio, was waging a mafia war as the third Colombo family civil war heated up and bodies started to drop. Both Nicky and Louis's luck would soon run out. We're joined by the host of The Burden, journalist Steve Fishman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Haiti's gangs have effectively taken over the country, plunging into chaos and violence as warring gangster warlords like the infamous Barbeque fight for territorial control. In February gangs stormed police stations, shot up the airport and freed thousands of prisoners after storming the country's biggest prisons, causing a humanitarian crisis. Things have gotten so bad that Kenya is sending in 1,000 police officers to try to regain some sort of control. We're joined by reporter Jason Motlagh, who's been reporting down there for years and has hung out with Barbeque before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 2000's, the Mexico government put together a list of dozens of Narco kingpins it wanted to bring down. Only one name from that list is not imprisoned or dead, and still sitting stop the Mexican cartel world: El Mayo. Nearing 80, he's never so much as been arrested despite co-founding and then co-leading the Sinaloa cartel for decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone knows El Chapo, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one time most powerful kingpin that Mexico has ever seen. The man who revolutionized the Mexican cartels' drug trade. But...what if he never actually was at the top of the food chain? Some have long suspected that the head of the Sinaloa cartel has always been Ismael Zambada Garcia, also known as El Mayo. Nearing his 80's, little is known about his early life, but he's always managed to stay two steps ahead of the cartel wars and the police. He's never been arrested. He's always played the background, avoiding the spotlight and letting Chapo get the notoriety even though they cofounded and shared leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With influencer and living meme Andrew Tate about to face trial in Romania, we dive into his connections to a powerful pair of Mafia brothers and their casino empire—and how the Tates pivoted from MMA to a gang that has terrorized the European nation for years. We also go deep on the history of Romanian organized crime, from Ponzi schemes to ATM skimming gangs and Europe’s biggest human trafficking syndicate—and show how Romania and the Tates had been on a criminal collision course for decades Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Boris Nayfeld's life is like something out of a movie; orphaned in the former Soviet Union, he served time in a brutal penal colony before establishing himself as a top tier street criminal before escaping for America. No stranger to violence, he got involved in the burgeoning Russian mafia factions rising up in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach during the 1980's. But he’s way more than just a two bit gangster. He’s been involved in organized crime from Odessa to Thailand to Antwerp, survived 5 assassination attempts, done prison in the US and the former soviet union, and been involved in diamond heists, heroin trafficking, extortion, shootouts, tangled with Russian Thieves in Law…the guy’s name carries weight. And somehow, through it all, he survived when nearly everyone else he came up with didn't. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lo Hsing Han was a Burmese narco so powerful that Richard Nixon called him a Godfather. But the Kokang king tried one too many shady deals, sending the Golden Triangle’s heroin industry on a helter-skelter path toward a bloody, 2023 shootout with Chinese cops—at a lawless casino town on the edge of nowhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night. And they blew up his house too. And the racket boys, they really did have a fight...a brutal one that lasted decades and saw Skinny Joey Merlino come out on top. He's not just America's next top crime podcaster and patreon star, he's also the one-time boss of the Philadelphia mafia and (allegedly!) still the don of Philly, if you believe the feds. Merlino, though, is no joke. Surviving by the skin of his teeth and dodging multiple assassinations in the 80's and 90's, he went from the son of shunned one-time underboss Chuckie Merlino to the top position when him and his crew of young gunners took on all comers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medellin was once the world's most violent city, torn about by Pablo Escobar's murderous cartel warfare and later, Don Berna's meteoric rise to control the city's drug trade. Over the last decade, though, the city has grown quite safe, becoming a tourism hotspot and hub for digital nomads attracted to it's people, parties and culture. But a recent spate of robbery turned murders, mostly targeting foreigners through dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, is once again throwing the city's rep into question and garnering international headlines. But who, exactly, is behind it? We're joined by Underworld favorite and Colombian underworld specialist, reporter and producer Toby Muse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Olive Yang—or Miss Hairy Legs, or Two-Gun Mulan, or any number of nicknames folks gave her—was the gunslinging princess of Kokang who bucked the royal yolk to become one of the Golden Triangle’s biggest narco traffickers. With DC’s backing she built an empire all over Asia, and did some pretty impressive spycraft on the side. Part one of this crazy two-parter tracks the rise of Olive and her “Boys,” the gangsters of the Kokang bush, a stint in prison, 999 dope and something Olive’s sister called, euphemistically, the “special belt.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Ponzi schemes to shitcoins, phishing scams and Nigerian princes, we’re living in a golden age of online crime. But hasn’t it always been this way? Cory Doctorow’s latest novel “The Bezzle” dives into some of these recesses, and America’s prison-industrial complex—all part of something he’s dubbed the “enshittification” of the World Wide Web Get 20% off and free shipping with the code Underworld at Manscaped.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo aka the Big Tuna (!) was one of the most powerful Mob Bosses that the American Mafia has ever seen, sitting atop the brutal Chicago Outfit for 40 years. From being an errand boy turned hitman for none other than Al Capone to taking the Outfit from a local prohibition gang to a national powerhouse with multiple Vegas casinos, Accardo's seven decade career in the underworld is legendary. And you'll never guess which current NFL all stars are his great-grandsons... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two years ago, Kyle MacLachlan, the star of Twin Peaks, called investigative journalist Joshua Davis with a strange story. Kyle had heard a rumor that Pablo Escobar did a deal in the early 1980s with a remote, coastal Southern town of 300 people. In exchange for vast wealth and limitless cocaine, Escobar would be allowed to land planes and ships in the area. Over the last 24 months, Josh and Kyle investigated the rumor, journeying to Varnamtown to knock on doors and find out what really happens when a firehose of money and cocaine is turned on a small, tight knit community. Listen to Varnamtown wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Chinese-American reporter Henry Liu was gunned down in his Daly City garage in 1984, it brought the Bamboo Union, Taiwan’s most powerful Triad, to global attention. But while the killing frayed ties between the island and DC, authorities skipped over a guy in California pulling the strings all along—a silver-tongued philosophy grad who’d gone from Taipei street fighting to restauranteur and the Bamboo Union’s point-man in the United States. His name was Chang An-lo, and he’d soon be behind bars for a massive narco bust in New York. But insiders knew him by another, far more fearsome name: White Wolf. And his story—one that would weave between the States, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland—was just getting started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may have seen the news last week, about a Yakuza boss caught in Bangkok trying to sell nuclear material to a fake Iranian general. Takeshi Ebisawa and a group of co-conspirators are behind bars, awaiting extradition to the US, the dopes in a sting operation that could’ve been lifted straight from Hollywood. But how legit is the bust? And who is Ebisawa, the stout, goateed gangster cops have been saying for years is a Yakuza don—despite that not really being a thing? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When members of the fearsome and brutal Zetas cartel kidnapped her daughter, Miriam Rodriguez did what they asked and paid the ransom. But it wasn't enough, and she never saw her daughter again. Fed up with a lack of help from the police, she went on a one-woman crusade for justice, tracking down the men responsible for killing her daughter by any means possible. New York Times reporter Azam Ahmed joins us to talk about his new book, Fear is Just a Word, about Miriam Rodriguez and the quest for hard to find justice again Mexico's cartels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the face of it, Toni Musulin and Redoine Faïd couldn’t be more different: one a quiet, skinflint armored vehicle driver, the other a flamboyant gang leader who went on the lam in Tel Aviv disguised as religious. But the crimes of both men captured French hearts and minds, catapulting them to infamy and prompting some, in the wake of the global financial crash, to describe them as Robin Hoods. But neither man fit that particular bill—even if their money-grabbing plots could’ve been ripped from a Hollywood script. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Wa tribe, an indigenous tribe residing in the mountainous Burma China borderlands, has long had a reputation as a people not to be trifled with. And yes, they were actually headhunters, well into the 20th century. Known as powerful warriors who weren't keen on outsiders telling them what to do, they were able to carve out their own autonomous state in Myanmar despite the ruling junta's militant authoritarianism, Long before they launched the powerful United Wa State Army in 1989, various warlords had grown opium and sold it to a shadowy group of Chinese dealers known as The Exiles. And then in the late 1980’s, there’s a man that takes the helm. He’s quiet, unassuming, basically an accountant and logistics guy. He’s half Chinese and Half Wa. Not a tough guy cowboy headhunter war lord. But even today, they still speak his name quietly, if at all. Wei Xuegang. And he sets up his heroin trafficking operation to be one of the biggest the world has ever seen. Much, much more in this episode, with Patrick Winn, Bangkok based journalist and author of the new book Narcotopia, including various CIA and DEA entanglements, battles with the infamous Khun Sa, and the move to the potent asian methamphetamine pills known as Yaba. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month armed men stormed an Ecuadorean TV station, shocking the world and plunging the nation into gang hell. Prosecutors have been assassinated and gangs are looting offices, universities and even hospitals, as martial law takes hold. It might seem like Ecuador has gone from Latin American idyll to narco-state overnight. The truth, though, is that it’s been bubbling under the surface for half a century. We dig into the laws, routes, rebels and cowboys that have gotten us here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dubbed the Cocaine Godmother and the Black Widow, Griselda Blanco rose to power when the cocaine boom was taking off and Colombian cartels started pumping product into the US, mainly through Miami. As the floodgates opened and tens of millions of dollars were being made on the streets, everyone wanted to be on top of pyramid, including Griselda...and she was more than willing to have people killed to get there, innocent or otherwise. Griselda's shooters turned Miami into a war zone as her Colombian connections in her hometown of Medellin got her a never-ending supply of the best product...but even the cartels soon tired of her recklessness and bloodthirsty methods. Now the inspiration for a new Netflix Series starring Sofia Vergara (call Sean!) Head to factormeals.com/underworld50 and use code underworld50 to get 50% off! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a team of cops drove a truck laden with Sinaloa Cartel product out of a Tijuana warehouse in November, experts predicted violence even worse than the city had suffered in recent years, as roiling fentanyl and meth industries had made it Mexico’s most dangerous city by far. The reprisals began just hours later—and they still haven’t stopped. Now, with bodies piling, sex and people trafficking at all-time highs and the golden days of prohibition racetracks a more-than-distant memory, what on earth can be done to quell the killing? With Tijuana’s mayor holed up in an army barracks, perhaps not a lot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mysterious Chinese-born criminal mastermind Tse Chi Lop didn't raise too many eyebrows when he was arrested in Canada in the 1990's for running heroin with the Hong Kong Triads known as the Big Circle Gang in a partnership with the Rizzuto family, a Canadian-Italian mafia clan. But after serving nearly a decade in prison, the laid back, soft-spoken and supremely confident drug lord went about setting up the biggest methamphetamine and synthetic drug cartel in Asia and some say, the world. Sitting atop Sam Gor, also known as the company, Chi Lop was apparently helping the Triad cartel bring in upwards of 17 billon dollars a year. Now awaiting trial in Australia after he was arrested in Amsterdam, what will Tse Chi Lop's trial reveal about the mysterious man alleged to be Asia's biggest drug lord? Reporter Josh Berlinger has been tracking him for years and brings us the story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny and Sean jump in on all of your questions for this Christmas New Years week specia; Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We do Christmas shows different. Using ancient desert trade routes made famous by megarich kings, narcos, terrorists and arms traffickers have turned the Sahel region into one of the world’s deadliest drug caravans. In recent years cigarette traders, Tuareg separatists and religious rebels have coalesced into a giant, lucrative underworld. Among its key players, one man stands out—and though his career path is about as apocryphal as the average midnight mass, his impact is no less huge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long before Pearl Harbor the US had already lost 243 mariners at sea. German UBoats came close enough to NY harbor to sink US merchant ships just by looking for their dark silhouettes against the lights of the city. American bodies washed back to American shores as if they had just gotten stuck in the riptide. The lucky ones were dead on impact. But Some of the U-boats surfaced, collected the survivors and brought them below decks for interrogation before being flung back to sea, shivering aboard a hopeless liferaft. The few US survivors described something odd about the ships: they were loaded with American goods, stuffed to the rafters like the backroom of a mafia hangout. And the strangest mystery of all that would set this whole story in motion and perplexed Naval intelligence: the Nazi UBoats had freshly baked American sliced bread. The US government thought there was only one man that could help figured things out. Problem was, he was locked up in prison in New York on the usual mafia racketeering charges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At one point in the 1960s Air America was the largest carrier on the planet. It was also a CIA front, and its ragtag pilots ferried tons of raw opium up and down Laos during Washington’s “Secret War” against Communism. This week’s show gets into the history of the illicit airline, and the corrupt officials, French mob and heroin-producing tribes who won big from AA’s operations—immortalized in the 1990 blockbuster “Air America” (13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trafficante crime family ruled Florida for decades, earning the respect and admiration of powerful mobsters like Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Sam Giancana. Santo Trafficante Sr arrived in Tampa as a boy from Sicily and took to the underworld with a talent for business, setting up the illegal lottery known as the Bolita before using his Spanish skills to make him indispensable to the powerful five families who wanted to set up shop in Cuba. When his son, Santo Jr, took the reigns, they soon controlled casinos, nightclubs and luxury hotels, as well as narcotics trafficking routes, from Cuba to Miami to Tampa. But the heady days of Fulgencio Batista's Cuba was coming to a close, and the Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro were going to complicate things. So much so that Trafficante soon found himself in one of America's strangest alliances and even stranger assassination plots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zeke Faux is an NYC-based reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek. His new book, “Number Go Up”, is a wild ride into the criminal heart of cryptocurrency - from missing billions and cartel money-laundering, to Tether, FTX, bros in the Bahamas and crypto slaves in Southeast Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

El Salvador's warring street gangs-turned-armies may have finally been broken thanks to the heavy-handed policies of Nayib Bukele dumping anyone and everyone into prison. But before MS-13 and 18th Street had been taken down a notch, they ruled neighborhoods in El Salvador with a brutality rarely seen. It's not just face tattoos and machetes. We break down the origins of the gangs here and our time spent with them in El Salvador. Support our sponsors at butcherbox.com/underworld and use code underworld and uncommongoods.com/underworld Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fake country and a global scam operation, must be in want of a wife with a penny-stock mining operation who can stalk government officials in their dreams. In the second instalment of our Dominion of Melchizedek two-parter, the conman mothership ventures out in search of a home; establishes diplomatic relations with fellow micronations; tries to rebuild the Queen Mary oceanliner; and endures a bitter power struggle. Oh, and its current PM spent two hours shooting the breeze with Sean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in the early 1980s David and Mark Pedley were little more than a father-son real estate scam duo. Then came prison, escape, and a self-penned Bible, named for an obscure Jerusalem priest and the foundation for a micronation called the Dominion of Melchizedek. It was no ordinary secession movement. The Dominion would become one of its era's greatest swindles, taking in bogus firms, Vegas slots, Hong Kong archdukes and Idy Amin's mansion. Then, with the backing of a mysterious Carpathian tribe, the Dominion of Melchizedek declared war on France. Part one of a frankly insane two-parter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carlos Marcello went from a small time produce hustler to heading up the New Orleans Mafia with a massive gambling empire and a hand in every pie in the city's notorious underworld. He even found himself in business with the heavyweights from New York's five families. And though he tried to keep himself out of the spotlight, the Kennedy brother's war on America's mafia, with John as president and Robert as attorney general, made sure the FBI knew he was and stayed on his case. In fact, RFK once had him kidnapped and deported to Guatemala and Marcello was overheard swearing to get revenge. But how far did he go? Could he have been involved in the assassination of a president? All that and the story of Sean's first arrest for public indecency on Bourbon Street. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The final show in our Chechen trilogy focuses on the republic's current gangster-in-chief, Ramzan Kadyrov, and his rise to become one of the world's most fearsome—but also bumbling—despots. Kadyrov has cozied up to Vladimir Putin, dispatched hired killers to quell dissent, empowered Chechen mafiosi and even launched his own film studio to create a North Korea-style cult of personality in the Caucasian state. And of course, there's football, boxing with Mike Tyson and Kadyrov's successful forays into MMA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices