All Blog Posts Tagged 'Drugs' (122)

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.…

By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto



Italian organized crime, divided in Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita, is a rich and powerful criminal enterprise…

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

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 David Amoruso



Besides financial fraud, trafficking in narcotics is still the crime that pays the most. Groups and individuals from across the world have experienced the huge and seemingly easy profit drugs bring. Be it cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or weed: it all translates to money. And lots of…

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

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

A large table with men seated around it in silence. One man does all the talking. “You can work in everything - extortion, cocaine, heroin,” he says. That man is mob boss Antonio Nesci, and every word he utters is captured on video giving it the feel of a Hollywood movie. Only this is real life. Swiss police just caught a meeting of the…

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…

By Clarence Walker

Who rules the cocaine trade? Will Colombian cartels  remain a  major force in the illegal drug trade in South America and Central America--the primary producing countries of cocaine? Or has other foreigners monopolized the Colombian drug trade to limit the Colombians ability to control the European and Central America illegal drug…

By David Amoruso

Gambino crime family associate Gennaro “Jerry” Bruno (above) was hit with racketeering charges yesterday. Authorities say Bruno was involved in the 2002 murder of a rival, narcotics trafficking, extortion, and obstruction of justice. The mobster was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, by FBI agents, and faces a long hard time behind…

By David Amoruso

Until authorities took it down, the Bonanno crime family in New York, the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, and the Rizzuto clan and Hells Angels in Montreal ran one hell of a lucrative drug pipeline. One that made its participants hundreds of millions of dollars and gave legions of drug users their fix. Nothing new there really.…

By David Amoruso

Three members of an outlaw motorcycle gang are currently in Iraq to fight terrorist organization Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or IS. The three men are “stationed” in Mosul and fighting alongside the Kurds. Wars are raging throughout the Middle East and attract not just religious terrorists, but bikers and gangsters as…

By Clarence Walker  

Cocaine comes from a natural plant grown deep in the jungles of South America. To bear fruit, farmers plant the plant that make cocaine; then the plant is picked and processed for distribution. The shimmering white colored powder cross over transnational borders and eventually find its way around the world where hordes of users…

By David Amoruso

‘Ndrangheta boss Pantaleone Mancuso was arrested last month as he tried to cross the Argentinian border into Brazil. He is wanted in Italy for Mafia association and two attempted murders and had been on the run since April. Mancuso heads the ‘Ndrangheta’s financially most powerful clan that has connections to drug…

“His impact on the American Mafia was much more than to just have helped the law incarcerate a man who at the time, they considered perhaps the most powerful hoodlum in the country. By helping to nail him and thus sending him to prison, he created a chain of events that would have perhaps, the most significant repercussions on Italian-American organized crime…

By David Amoruso

As a fugitive you have to be creative to remain a free man. Even when that means dressing up as a woman every now and then. Just ask 42-year-old Camorra boss Aldo Gionta.

This past Saturday, Gionta was arrested by plain clothes policemen at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo as he tried to board a ferry for Malta using false papers. Agents…