The Dominion of Melchizedek: The "Mothership for Con Artists Worldwide"
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 ...
7 Nov 202346min
The New Orleans Godfather and the JFK Assassination: Carlos Marcello
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 hims...
31 Okt 202343min
The Chechen Mafia Goes Global: Ramzan Kadyrov, Car Bombs, Guns-for-hire and The World's Weirdest Reality Show
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 ha...
24 Okt 202349min
The Knife Fighting Italian Gangster Who Built an Army while in Prison
The Camorra clans of Naples had always played second fiddle to the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian 'Ndranghetta. Until Raffaelle Cutolo started building up his Nuovo Camorra Organization while locked...
17 Okt 202339min
How Russian Mobsters Masterminded a Crazy, Fake Cricket League for Betting Riches: Sean's in the Field!
This May, on assignment for _Sports Illustrated_, Sean visited Molipur, a tiny village in Gujarat, India, to dive into what seemed like a funny caper: villagers establishing a fake cricket league to f...
10 Okt 202352min
The Secret Rise of Female Narcos in Latin American Cartels with Deborah Bonello
Deborah Bonello is a Mexico City-based reporter who's distilled years of reporting on some of the most dangerous women on earth into her new book "Narcas: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America's C...
3 Okt 20231h 3min
Ex-Con Mercenaries, Wagner, Prigozhin, and the Russian Mafiosos Fighting in Ukraine with Joshua Yaffa
The Russian mercenary/state aligned outfit Wagner emerged from the early days of the war in Ukraine, led by an ex-con turned hot dog salesman turned Putin lapdog. In no time, they were operating in th...
26 Sep 202347min
The Chechen Mafia Strikes Back: War Profiteering, School Sieges and a Turncoat Named Kadyrov
The Soviet Union is toast, Chechnya is at war and Grozny, its embattled capital, is being bombed to dust. Gangs of Chechen criminals are getting rich off the bloodshed, capitalizing on gun- and drug-r...
19 Sep 202353min
