The Underworld Podcast

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