Curated playlist
Transnational organized crime
- Wagner GroupRussia swore the Wagner Group did not exist, then admitted paying it.
- Sicilian MafiaThe Sicilian Mafia, an Italian criminal society born on the island of Sicily and also called Cosa Nostra, once made a young man juggle a burning saint. In 1976, a man named Giovanni Brusca was invited to what was called a banquet at a…
- Los ZetasLos Zetas took its name from a radio call sign. Z1 belonged to Arturo Guzmán Decena, the group's first commander, who had carried that code in the Federal Judicial Police, where it was given to high-ranking officers. In Spanish the name…
- Triad (organised crime)A triad is a Chinese transnational crime syndicate, and its recruits have traditionally been sworn in at an altar dedicated to the warrior god Guan Yu. Incense burns there, and an animal is sacrificed, usually a chicken, pig, or goat. The…
- Russian mafiaThe Russian mafia, known in Russian as bratva, stepped into the spotlight in May 1995, when Czech police raided the U Holubu restaurant in Anděl, a neighborhood of Prague. Semion Mogilevich had gathered Russian mafia bosses there for a…
- Cali CartelBetween 1993 and 1995, the Cali Cartel was cited as controlling over 80% of the world's cocaine market. Its home was southern Colombia, around the city of Cali and the Valle del Cauca. By the mid-1990s its leaders presided over a criminal…
- MS-13MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha, is an international criminal gang that began in Los Angeles, California, in the 1980s. In 2018, its membership in the United States was put at up to 10,000 people. That was less than 1 percent of the 1.4…
- Tren de AraguaIn September 2023-11,000 members of Venezuela's security forces moved on a prison that doubled as the headquarters of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan crime syndicate whose name means Aragua Train. The prison was the Aragua Penitentiary…
- Medellín CartelThe Medellín Cartel, a loose coalition of Colombian drug trafficking organizations, owed part of its American reach to a conversation between two bunkmates in Connecticut. George Jung was serving time at the Federal Correctional…
- Sinaloa CartelThe Sinaloa Cartel lost two of its senior figures on the 25th of July 2024, when United States authorities arrested Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López in El Paso, Texas. Guzmán López is a son of the better-known Joaquín "El…
- YakuzaThe yakuza, the members of Japan's organized crime syndicates, are named after a losing hand of cards. In the traditional game Oicho-Kabu, players try to draw three cards that add up to nine. A total of ten or more counts only by its…
- CamorraThe Camorra is a Mafia-type criminal society from the Italian region of Campania, and it ranks among the oldest and largest in Italy. One of its own clan leaders, Pasquale Galasso, once told a court: "Campania can get worse because you…
- 'NdranghetaThe 'Ndrangheta, a criminal syndicate from the Calabria region of Italy, carried a village feud to Germany on the 15th of August 2007. Six men were shot dead in front of an Italian restaurant in Duisburg. The killings belonged to a war…