The Underworld Podcast

When a fascist killer plunged his sword into Japan’s socialist leader on live TV, few could have predicted its consequences. But gangs of sailor-suited ‘girl bosses’ and pompadour-wearing, ex-kamikaze fighting bikers probably weren’t top of the list. Then again who’d expect Japanese youth, rallying against Yakuza mobsters and corrupt politicians, to birth individuals less mad than Bosos who scream...

This is the story of Pistol Pete, one of the most revered killers to ever walk the streets of New York City, who found infamy after the small click he founded in the Bronx, Sex Money Murda, linked up with a newly burgeoning prison gang federation called the United Blood Nation. Together, both groups would spread up and down the east coast and have such a powerful influence in the streets than 30 y...

As things heat up in the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Sean meets soccer journalist Philippe Auclair in a London pub (of course) to talk about the many crimes stalking the Beautiful Game—from bribery and fraud within FIFA, to the covered-up deaths of workers in Doha, and crypto and betting scams that have slipped into the sport’s top tiers. Subscribe for bonuses on Itunes and Patreon.com/Theunderw...

In less than 3 decades, a Brazilian gang formed during a prison soccer tournament has become one of, if not the most powerful gang in all of Latin America, branching out from the jails cells, to the streets of Sao Paolo, to all over Latin America and working hand in hand with groups like the Ndranghetta, Russian mobsters, and a who’s who of global organized crime. This is the story of how the PCC,...

Sean met Atlanta crime reporter George Chidi to talk about the city's rap labels and their role in its spiraling gang violence—from Young Thug and Lil Baby to the even more extreme drill scene, and the corruption, poverty and racism that underpins a murder rate far beyond Chicago's. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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When the pandemic took punters from Southeast Asia’s most notorious gambling dens, their gangster owners turned to the web, entrapping thousands of unwitting slaves and putting them to work in high-rises, aiming to scam western marks out of millions. Nathan Paul Southern and Lindsey Kennedy took a trip along the Mekong this summer. What they discovered was incredible and tragic in equal measure—an...

Felix "The Cat" Mitchell was like nothing Oakland had ever seen before. He took over the city's heroin market from, wholesale to retail, driving exotic cars through some of the grittiest streets in America, flanked by his assault rifle carrying lieutenants while keeping massive housing projects locked down like fortresses while dripped out in full length fur jackets and glittering diamonds. He als...

When Roberto Calvi's body was found swinging from a London bridge in 1982 it sent shockwaves through the religious, financial and criminal worlds. But who killed him? And how are the Vatican, Italy's powerful Mafia, a secret society called P2 and a Pope's death all linked in this wild, barely believable web of deceit and dollars? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the era of prohibition, Charlie Birger built a bootlegging and gambling empire in southern Illinois, otherwise known as little Cairo. He charmed women, passed out money to children and poor families, bought off all the police and politicians...and killed anyone who got in his way. But he wasn't the only building an army in 1920's rural Illinois. The second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan was on t...

Rainer Sonntag was just your run-of-the-mill, anti-state East German petty criminal—until a black ops team headed by then-KGB agent Vladimir Putin helped turn him into one of Europe's leading neo-Nazi leaders. When the Berlin Wall fell, Putin fled to Saint Petersburg and Sonntag returned to his hometown of Dresden. There he led a gang of skinhead thugs to shake down and beat up foreigners. But whe...

Caviar has been considered a delicacy since ancient times. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, a black market flourished—and kicked off gang wars along the coasts of the Caspian Sea. Then, years later, the caviar mafia came to a tiny Missouri town. But its maritime mobsters hadn't reckoned with an experienced undercover cop and an ingenious plan that would snag them hook, line and sinker. Learn m...

Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, better known as Moosewala, was on the cusp of becoming a global superstar. Racking up billions of views on youtube, the Punjabi rapper heavily influenced by Tupac had blown up since arriving in Canada as an international student in 2016. His lyrics about gangsters, guns, and everything that went with it in rural Punjab struck a cord with listeners around the globe. But he wa...

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was headed by a messianic, Karachi financier named Agha Hasan Abedi, with deep, deep connections all round the world. So deep, in fact, that nearly every criminal mastermind and corrupt ruler in the world used his bank as it went deeper and deeper, turning into a 20 billion dollar bank of the underworld. Abedi had connections to intelligence chiefs and...

Before El Mencho or El Chapo, even before Pablo Escobar, there was Ignacia Jasso, otherwise known as “La Nacha.” She was the Queen Pin of Juárez who ran the border heroin trade for 50 years from 1930 to 1980. Declared public enemy number one by the Americans, she still managed to escape the law by pretending to be an evangelical Christian and with the help of some extremely crafty lawyering. Danny...

Over the last three years there's been an explosion of fentanyl on the streets of America and it's led to over 100,000 Americans dying from drug overdoses, the overwhelming majority because of fent. In this episode, Sean lays out the way producers in China have connected with Mexican drug cartels from shipping precursors to laundering money, where Danny speaks on the effects he's seen in the stree...

We’re shaking things up today and sharing a preview from Hot Money, a new podcast from our friends at Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times. When Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: Nobody knew who controlled the biggest porn company in the world. Now, Nilsson and her editor, Alex Barker, have figured out who the guy...

In this episode, Sean gets into the details about his story for Rolling Stone on Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, the rapper turned prime minister favorite in Belize, from the narco-trafficking taking place to the street side gang wars. Danny reports on Ukraine's intensifying war in the east of the country, and what he's seen on the front lines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny's in Ukraine, and Sean's cover story at Sports Illustrated—about a Sicilian rugby team facing down the Mafia—just dropped. So we're combining the two, first with a rundown of Danny's movements in Kharkiv and beyond - then with an SI Weekly audio documentary about the rugby feature. That part chronicles the trials and tribulations of Briganti, a club in the depressed neighborhood of Librino,...

For years, Dublin-born Daniel Kinahan built on the work of his heroin-lord father Christy, aka the Dapper Don, to become one of the world's biggest cocaine kingpins. Kinahan fostered some of boxing's brightest talents, including world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury via his Marbella, Spain-based promotion firm and gym, MGM. But in 2016 assassins came for Kinahan on his home turf, kicking off a gan...

We're joined by journalist and writer Peter Ward, whose upcoming book The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever is out this week. Since the times of Gilgamesh, humans have dreamed of living forever. Since the 1960s, when the son of a bank-robbing mobster froze a psychologist (then lost him), cryonics has been touted as a way to be reanimated in decades, or centuries, from now. Except that...

In the 1920's, high level gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky had a plan to bring some semblance of order to the underworld. Together with a few other kingpins, they formed the Syndicate: a collection of the most powerful organized crime figures across the country that operated like a corporation with a board of directors that voted on everything related to gangsters. To make sure their...

Here’s a special preview of the new season of Cautionary Tales from Pushkin Industries. On Cautionary Tales, bestselling author Tim Harford shares stories of human error, natural disasters, and tragic catastrophes from history that teach us important lessons for today. In this preview, you’ll hear about the 1981 Hyatt Regency Hotel collapse, a shocking design failure that resulted in 114 deaths an...

*Note: technical difficulties with Sean's microphone this episode, apologies* By the late Seventies Jai Alai, a superfast, racketball-like sport, had become one of the US’ most lucrative betting markets. That attracted Roger Wheeler, a mega-rich Tulsa tycoon, to pour millions into the game. It was also riddled with crime. Boston’s Irish Mob, led by the bloodthirsty James “Whitey” Bulger, would mak...

We're joined by author Noah Hurowitz to tell the story of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, one of the most powerful narco-traffickers to every live, with an estimated fortune of 25 billion dollars. After having spent his youth learning the ways from the old guard of top-level drug lords, he rose to the top of the Juarez Cartel and became infamous for the fleet of jets he used to transport tons and tons of...