All Blog Posts Tagged 'Corruption' (89)

By Gary Jenkins

This is the 4th and final installment about the life and times of Chicago’s most feared hitman, Harry “The Hook” Aleman. We have arrived at the downfall of this infamous mobster. Though he got away with countless murders, justice finally caught up and brought him down. Here’s how.

Harry had been…

By Gary Jenkins

In this third installment about Harry “The Hook” Aleman, a half Mexican, half Sicilian Chicago Outfit hitman, enforcer, street tax collector, and the capo of a home invasion crew, I will examine the case that will eventually bring Aleman to justice. This will be a long and crazy path so hang on and keep…

By David Amoruso

As a vor v zakone, mob boss Razhden Shulaya (above) was an official member of a century-old criminal tradition. As such, he was treated as Russian Mafia royalty. He used that position to run a sprawling organization involved in kidnapping, assault, fraud, extortion, and money laundering throughout the…

By David Amoruso

Men with vision always make it into the history books. No matter which world they inhabit, if they start a groundbreaking movement, they will be remembered. So it is with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (photo above), the founder of Mexico’s cartel underworld.

Gallardo’s rise follows a path of humble…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Nothing sadder than a corrupt public servant who breaks his oath to protect society against crime and terror. In England, a joint investigation by the National Crime Agency, Metropolitan Police, and French police was able to catch one such official as he attempted to smuggle guns and drugs into…

By David Amoruso

Authorities have identified a second suspect in the brazen murder of Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger at a federal prison in West Virginia. 44-year-old Paul J. DeCologero allegedly killed Bulger with Fotios “Freddy” Geas and one other man.

DeCologero was part of “the life” as a member of his…

By David Amoruso

After dodging bullets throughout his criminal career, Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger ultimately met his demise by being hit with a lock wrapped in a sock. The blows were too much for the 89-year-old as he died behind bars just a few years into a life sentence for racketeering and several murders.…

By David Amoruso

What goes around, comes around. Infamous Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was murdered inside a federal prison in West Virginia on Tuesday. He was serving a life sentence for the many crimes he committed in his long and notorious career, but apparently someone felt he deserved to die right then and…

By David Amoruso

A court in Spain acquitted seventeen Russian nationals last week of money laundering and fraud charges tied to the Tambovskaya-Malyshevskaya organization, a well-known Russian Mafia group operating out of St. Petersburg. Nine other defendants, including mob bosses Gennady Petrov (photo above, left), Viktor…

By Robert Sberna

By the 1970s, Cleveland’s once-powerful underworld was merely a shadow of itself. Just 20 years earlier, the city’s Mafia was a thriving enterprise, with up to 60 made (formally inducted) men involved in loansharking, gambling and union rackets.

The dwindling of the…

By David Amoruso

Decades after the slaughter of journalists, police officers, judges, and politicians, termed “excellent cadavers” by the media, Sicily remains a harsh place for those fighting the Mafia. Claudio Fava, the chairman of Sicily’s anti-Mafia commission, received a threatening envelope, one with a bullet…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

A former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana as part of an interstate drug trafficking scheme in which the deputy agreed to use his position as a law enforcement officer to ensure the successful transport of…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

A legislator in the National Congress of Honduras and three other men were charged on Tuesday in a DEA-led probe with drug trafficking and weapons crimes. 57-year-old congressman Midence Oqueli Martinez Turcios (above) follows in the footsteps of his colleague Fredy Renan Najera Montoya, who, in…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

The ghost of Pablo Escobar continues to haunt his former associates. In newly declassified cables from the State Department, Álvaro Uribe, former Colombian president and one of the nation’s most powerful political figures, was frequently accused of having close ties to drug lords such as…

By David Amoruso

It’s hard to become a new person. If you’ve spent years of your life trafficking drugs, committing kidnappings, robberies, and brutal murders all the while surrounded by like-minded men then changing yourself isn’t just hard, it becomes impossible.

Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (photo above), a man…

By David Amoruso

At 6’4” Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran literally was a towering figure. But to those who knew him in the American underworld, he was even taller. A fearsome force who had honed his deadly skills as a combat-hardened rifleman during the Second World War fighting the Nazis. Back home, he became a Mafia hitman,…

By David Amoruso

Cops swear to uphold the law and serve and protect the citizens of their nation. That’s why corruption hits society much harder than other crimes. In the…

By David Amoruso

A secret pact between the Sicilian Mafia and the Italian State has resulted in the conviction of eight men, including Mafia bosses and police and government officials, among them a close political associate of Silvio Berlusconi. The pact was made in the 1990s to bring a halt to Cosa Nostra’s bloody war…

By David Amoruso

He had disappeared in 2016. Like so many of his colleagues, Calabrian Mafia boss Giuseppe “Peppe” Pelle chose to live the life of a fugitive rather than spend it behind bars. From his hideaway in the Calabrian mountains he oversaw a large network which controlled regional politics.

The mountainous…

By David Amoruso

Every underworld has its first major crime boss. That man – or woman – who ascends to the top of the heap and controls organized crime in the city. For Hamilton, Ontario, that man was Rocco Perri. During the years of Prohibition, he became known as the “King of the Bootleggers.”

Born in…