The Underworld Podcast
Underworld exposes the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run. Journalists Danny Gold and Sean Williams bring their experience reporting on dangerous people and organizations to take listeners on a global tour of mobsters, warlords and crooks - from Brooklyn to Beijing, from the streets to the boardrooms - and everywhere in between. Underworld is a show about heroes, villains, and the barely visible mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.
In our final episode on the rise and fall and rise of the Pablo Escobar of Pakistan, he negotiates his own surrender to the DEA, maneuvers his way into the U.S. while dodging Pakistani intelligence agents out to kill him, and enjoys the hospitality of the American justice system. Then he returns to Pakistan, gets arrested again, and things get weird. Taliban weird. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Albania's turbulent Nineties, the small, seaside town of Vlore became a gangster’s paradise, playing host to hundreds of crooks ferrying drugs, weapons and people into nearby Puglia alongside Italian mafiosi. One of them was a slim, slick-haired former military man named Artur Shehu, who amassed a formidable property portfolio across Vlore — most reckoned, due to his friends in the Sacra Corona Unita, Italy's “fourth Mafia.” But when a 1999 bar gunfight forced Shehu into hiding, only to reappear in Miami two years later, his life was sent on a wild journey that would collide, in 2020, with America’s first family. And its fallout would echo to the highest levels of politics, crime and controversy in Albania and far beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
He might just be the biggest US drug smuggler you’ve never heard of. 1.3 billion in product moved. 16 different aliases. Bank accounts in 10 countries. A phantom, and a logistical genius. Stewart Newton quietly built what feds called the biggest ever drug smuggling operation in New England’s history, before suffering the largest ever narco assets seizure in US history. And he did it by leaving his Long Island mansion and going to Pakistan to meet the country’s biggest drug syndicate, the mountain warlords who ran the country. It’s one of the wildest stories in American crime history, never before told, until now. One scam can cost you everything. Use the code UNDERWORLD for up to 76 percent off at coveron.com/underworld Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bolivia's Cerro Rico has been spewing out tons of silver for centuries. It was the economic bellows of the Spanish Revolution, whose lust for the precious metal came at the price of some eight million slaves. Some of the empire's earliest gangs formed around the Cerro. They were called ‘Jukus,’ and one man stood above (or below) them all. Today's there's another, modern silver rush at Cerro Rico — and it's being led by the green energy revolution. EVs, wind turbines and data centers are all hungry for silver. Its price has almost quadrupled. That has brought a new wave of organized crime to Bolivia. This time they're smart, and armed. And the only people holding them back are a band of women packing nothing but dogs and sticks of dynamite. But Bolivia isn't alone. The race for rare-earth minerals has drawn cartels to mines across Latin America, killing miners and taking over entire operations from Quito to Cali. This documentary-style episode digs into organized crime's newest trend — and shows how dirty clean energy really is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5000 armed tribesman at his beck and a call. A mountain compound in a lawless territory. A seat in Pakistan’s parliament bought and paid for. And a heroin and hash empire that stretched from the mountains of Afghanistan to million dollar mansions in Long Island. Ayub Afridi started life as a poor, illiterate truck driver in a mud hut and turned a trucking company into a global drug trafficking operation. And once the Soviet Union went to war with Afghanistan, his control of Pakistan’s tribal areas perfectly positioned him to become a kingmaker. The guns went up in his trucks, the the opium came down to be refined into heroin that would stretch across the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this episode of Stashhouse: Wagner's leftover mercenaries are running a tramadol empire in the heart of Africa, while in Monaco a bomb takes out a Ukrainian tycoon, then someone takes out the assassin. Grenades, the mob, and Japanese food: an Israeli underworld war is being waged on the country's biggest sushi chain. Plus updates on friends of the show Kaz Hamad and Lawrence Bishnoi, two men proving you can run a thriving criminal empire from a prison cell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Earlier this month, Sinaloa Cartel mastermind Ismael Zambada García, aka El Mayo, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in growing one of the world’s biggest criminal empires. But while Mayo’s story may be ending, he leaves behind a mountain of unanswered questions. What actually went down on the day of his 2024 capture? Were US agents on the ground running the show? Who ordered the death of a major politician that same day? And who will come out on top, in the brutal Sinaloa civil war that has raged since Mayo was taken into American custody? A bumper show featuring Mayo’s attorney, a legal expert and Mexican investigative reporter Luis Chaparro. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When his Green Gang goons killed thousands of leftists in 1927’s Shanghai Massacre, Du Yuesheng was welcomed into the political scene of China’s nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. ‘Big Ears Du’ would then take over the country’s biggest city wholesale — running transport, water, electrical grids and even a major bank. All the while Du’s profits from narcotics and vice soared, making him one of the richest organized criminals in world history. But events in Asia were spiraling beyond Du’s control. China’s communists regrouped after the Green Gang had almost wiped them off the map. And Japan, its imperial ambitions supercharged by hypernationalist yakuza gangsters, eyed an invasion of Manchuria to fuel its war machine. Caught between a rock and a hard place, there was only one way for Du: down. And his fall would be almost as spectacular as his rise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
By the mid-1920s, Green Gang Boss Du Yuesheng had conquered almost all before him — including his own underworld mentor Huang Jinrong. Shanghai’s opium scene, torn open by British gunboats, belonged to him. But the city was about to become the crucible for a far more bloody showdown: one that would define modern China until today. With Communist Party agitators chipping away at his labor force, Du decided to pledge his allegiance to the city’s nationalist forces. And he would do it in terrible, gangster style. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
They call him Brazil's Pablo Escobar. Sérgio de Carvalho was an elite Brazilian police major who became one of the most wanted drug traffickers on Earth, accused of flying 45 tonnes of cocaine into Europe with his own private fleet of planes. Along the way he burned through ten fake identities, ran his empire from a prison cell, collected a police pension the entire time, and faked his own death from COVID. Then one morning in Budapest, it all ended over breakfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1992, the New York Mafia is falling apart. The Gambinos are in chaos, the Colombos are at war, the Genoveses are hiding behind Chin Gigante’s bathrobe act, and the Bonannos—the forgotten, disgraced family left for dead after the Donnie Brasco disaster—are waiting on one man: Joey Massino. Known as “The Last Don,” Massino quietly rebuilds the Bonanno family into the most powerful mob outfit in America, using paranoia, discipline, and an almost supernatural instinct for survival. Then, after a lifetime preaching silence and loyalty, he does the one thing no Five Families boss had ever done before: he flips. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Born into a peasant family on the outskirts of Shanghai, Du Yuesheng grew up an inveterate gambler and opium addict. But as he forged alliances in the growing metropolis’ underworld, members of a secret society-turned-cartel saw promise. Before long, ‘Big Ears Du’ was running gambling dens, opium divans and brothels. And as Shanghai, cleaved into foreign concessions and wildly unequal, became a global megacity, Du knew just who to befriend, best or kill to get his way. And by the mid-1920s, when China’s nationalists and communists were ready to throw down in Shanghai, Du stood ready to carve his name into Chinese history forever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow possesses one of the best mob nicknames out there. The San Francisco Chinatown gangster went from teenage immigrant hooligan from the streets of Hong Kong to one of the most infamous Asian organized crime figures in America. His story has everything: Chinatown tongs, Hong Kong triad influence, immigrant protection rackets, gambling dens, and the violent gang wars that turned San Francisco’s streets into a battleground. Then comes Shrimp Boy’s strange second act, when he reemerges from prison claiming to be a reformed community leader, even as the FBI is building a sprawling undercover case around him. It all ends in a wild corruption and organized crime scandal involving guns, money laundering, murder allegations, and a California state senator caught in the same net. Subscribe: www.patreon.com/theunderworldpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ibrahim Akasha was the kingpin of East Africa’s heroin highway, setting up a massive tracking empire that stretched from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to Kenya, South Africa and Europe. When he was gunned down in 2000, his sons stepped into the void, hungrier and even more violent...but also, more sloppy. They struck deals with Pakistani mobsters and Colombian cartels, turning Kenya’s ports into gateways for global dope. But their empire crumbled in a DEA sting straight out of a Hollywood script. *Note: Sean disappeared while on vacation in Amsterdam, Danny had to be hospitalized post Knicks win, so we took a week off for the first time in a year. Enjoy this classic episode from last summer: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When Mako Nishimura, the yakuza’s only female member, fell in love with a rival gangster, it would send her on a long and painful path from drug and sex trafficking, to painkiller addiction and finally a role helping ex-yakuza go straight. Her journey would mirror the downfall of the yakuza at-large, from the world’s largest criminal gangs to social outcasts, outwitted by cops and outpaced by new, digital criminals taking over the Japanese underworld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this week's Stash House: A fugitive Dutch cocaine kingpin dodges capture off the coast of West Africa. An Irish gang boss trades gangland warfare for electoral politics. Mexican officials accused of working for the Sinaloa Cartel surrender to U.S. authorities. A violent mafia feud erupts in southern Italy. Nigerian authorities uncover an industrial-scale meth lab allegedly linked to Mexican cartel cooks. And with the World Cup approaching, Mexico’s cartels reportedly decide that protecting tourists is simply good business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mako Nishimura graduated from high school delinquent to kamikaze biker gang, street tough and, eventually, a fully made member of a yakuza syndicate - the first (or perhaps second?) woman to do so. Nishimura made her gang huge amounts of cash selling women plus selling, and taking, huge quantities of methamphetamines. But by the end of the 1980s, Nishimura’s life was unraveling into a mess of addiction, violence and madness. When Japan’s economic bubble burst at the end of the decade, the yakuza would be staring at a long and painful decline. And Nishimura had bigger problems: she’d fallen in love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nuevo Laredo is one of the most feared cartel cities in Mexico, a place where disappearances, gun battles, and corruption became part of daily life as the Cartel del Noreste, or CDN, tightened its grip on the border. Born from the remnants of the brutal Zetas organization, CDN turned the city into a battlefield, fighting for control of smuggling routes into Texas while allegedly terrorizing civilians, journalists, and anyone seen as a threat. The city became so cartel-corrupted that it dismantled its own police force entirely. The documentary film Spring of the Vanishing adds another layer to the story, documenting how U.S.-trained Mexican marines deployed to fight the Zetas instead carried out their own wave of kidnappings and killings of civilians. Director Andrew Glazer pulls back the curtain on a city where families still search for missing loved ones, and where the line between organized crime and the state itself often seems impossible to separate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Meet the Stopwatch Gang: three polite Canadian crooks turned bank robbery into a precision sport, hitting over 140 banks across North America and walking away with $15 million without firing a single shot. They wore presidential Halloween masks, escaped from prison multiple times, and became so notorious that the boss landed on the FBI's Most Wanted list. At their peak, they stole millions while humiliating police forces across North America and becoming legends in the criminal underworld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Vassilis Paleokostas, and his big brother Nikos, grew up shoeless in a Greek mountain village. When the boys moved to a city, they discovered a talent for robbery — and honed it with a mysterious criminal known locally as The Artist. Before long, the trio were pulling off some of the most daring heists in European history. At a volatile time of financial crashes, leftwing guerrillas and political corruption, the brothers dove into a new gig: kidnapping billionaire business magnates. What confounded cops the most was how Vassilis Paleokostas distributed his loot among the poor, and how the Greek people loved him for it. If authorities did catch up with the country’s Robin Hood, there wasn’t a prison in the land that could hold him for long. Cue decades of capers that could keep a Hollywood writers’ room busy for months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices