Featured Blog Posts (270)

By David Amoruso

In the world of outlaws death is just around the corner. It comes with “the life.” And when an outlaw dies his funeral will tell outsiders a lot about his stature among his fellow brothers. In the case below, members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club went all out to honor their fallen comrade.

This past Saturday, the…

By David Amoruso

It ain’t easy being a gangster in Los Angeles. The City of Angels is known as the birthplace of many notorious gangs like the Crips, Bloods, and La Eme. African-Americans and Latinos rule the streets where gang shootings are an everyday occurrence. Surprisingly it was this hostile environment that gave birth to Armenian Power, a gang…

Part One

By Thom L. Jones

Melbourne, is the second largest city in Australia, by population, with over 4 million citizens.

It is also one of the most violent in the country.

Between 1984 and 1995, 35 people were shot dead by members of the Victoria Police. This compared to 10 shootings in the period 1971 to 1984.

One of…

By Seth Ferranti

Supreme is a towering street legend immortalized in both hip-hop and hood lore. An infamous drug lord with ties to both major players in the rap industry and a notoriously profitable and ruthless drug crew, The Supreme Team, that ruled the same Queens streets that later produced platinum selling artists like Ja Rule and 50 Cent. To…

By David Amoruso

No matter how hard Tong Sang Lai (photo above) ran, his past eventually caught up with him. As a leader of the Shui Fong Triad in Macau he fled to North America after a violent war over the island’s gambling riches drew too much heat. Yesterday, the Federal Court of Appeal in Canada upheld a ruling that he was a Triad boss and therefore…

By Christian Cipollini

Throughout the chaos of well-known and publicized mob warfare, several gangsters were learning lessons, gaining their own reputations and cementing future positions in what was becoming a new crime empire. They were young, most in their early twenties, but already hardened criminals. Brooklyn’s toughest, most rebellious and motivated…

By David Amoruso

Davide Vadacca is considered a rising star within Sacra Corona Unita, Italy’s fourth largest criminal group. At the young age of 32 he is one of the organization’s leaders in the city of Lecce. Authorities say he is also the man behind a violent war that is terrorizing the honest, hardworking people of the Italian city.…

CRIME BEAT: ISSUES, CONTROVERSIES AND PERSONALITIES FROM THE DARK SIDE on Artist First Radio Network is pleased to announce its schedule for January 29, 2014, through April 23, 2015. Topics covered include John Gotti, Murder Inc., the 1960s and drugs, Woody Harrelson's father, the Vatican, and more.

Here is the lineup:

• January 29 -…

By Seth Ferranti

To many in his hometown of Washington, D.C., during his 1980s reign as the city’s biggest cocaine and crack dealer, Rayful Edmond was public enemy number one. At the height of Dodge City’s brutal crack epidemic in 1987, this 22-year-old man was responsible for distributing 60 percent of the cocaine that flooded the city’s…

By David Amoruso

Authorities and the media alike tend to focus on the bosses and captains of mob families, and deservingly so. But it isn’t until we take a look at the young up-and-coming mobsters that we get a sense of what’s in store for the future of La Cosa Nostra in the United States.

Take 36-year-old Giuseppe Destefano (photo above). He…

By David Amoruso

The times they keep a-changin’. Over a decade ago, Casablanca restaurant in Maspeth, Queens, was the home base of Joseph Massino, boss of the Bonanno family, one of New York’s five Mafia families. At that time he wielded tremendous power as he was the only boss not behind…

By David Amoruso

When it comes to the mob in America everybody knows about the five families in New York or Al Capone in Chicago. But what about a smaller city? Like Tampa, Florida. A city that has a long and colorful history of violence filled with gangsters from Italy, Spain, Cuba, and the U.S. itself. A brand-new magazine and tour shine a…

By Peter Lance

John Marzulli, who covers organized crime for the N.Y. Daily News today broke a story on the new memoir by John A. “Junior” Gotti to be released this week. As Marzulli reports, the book had been under wraps for months. It will be…

By David Amoruso

It was undoubtedly the biggest crime news of 2014, the capture of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on February 22 at his condominium in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico. But in a new…

By David Amoruso

It was to be the a huge blow against Mexican drug cartels. “These cartels will be destroyed,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. Led by the ATF, Operation Fast and Furious was to cripple the cartels’ ability to traffic and use American guns. But things turned out very differently and people continue to die from ATF-facilitated…

By David Amoruso

Antonio Madafferi, an honest and successful businessman or senior leader of the ‘Ndrangheta crime clan in Melbourne, Australia? It depends on who you ask, but police are quite certain that Madafferi runs one of the country’s most powerful criminal organizations, one that moves record-breaking amounts of drugs and has connections…

By David Amoruso

Police in Italy and the United States have busted up an international extortion racket run by the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta and the Gambino crime family in New York. Eight people in both countries were arrested today, including Francesco Palmeri, who, authorities claim, is a high-ranking member of the Gambino family.

As…

By David Amoruso

Would you tell a vicious mobster to his face that his wife looks like a moose? Seriously. Would you have the balls to do that? Forget about balls for a second, would you be crazy enough to do that? You, probably not. But comedian Don Rickles built his entire act around it. Nicknamed the King of Zing, Rickles pokes fun at everyone. Blacks,…

By David Amoruso

Mobster Tonino Callocchia was shot to death yesterday as he dined at a restaurant in Riviere-des-Prairies, Montreal. He was 53. His murder is the latest to rock the Canadian city as two mafia factions are fighting a vicious war for control of the rackets.

The longtime mobster was enjoying a meal at Bistro XO+ (photo above)…

By David Amoruso

It’s a bad time to be a secretive criminal organization. Today, Italian authorities released video of a ‘Ndrangheta elite swearing-in ceremony after concluding a two year investigation resulting in the arrest of forty suspected members of the criminal brotherhood from Calabria.  

“It's the first time that the swearing in, with the…