November 2017 Blog Posts (16)

By Justin Cascio

The city of Springfield, Massachusetts, has a hundred-year long relationship with the Genovese Crime Family of New York. Its ties to the Neapolitan Camorra may be equally old. Five associates and members of the…

By David Amoruso

His is an amazing story. If only because not many men with similar lives would live to tell it. John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez is still very much alive and eager to share his tale about his days working as Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s trusted hitman.

Known by his nickname “…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Massachusetts is serious about getting rid of its MS-13 presence. A federal jury convicted one of its leaders of racketeering conspiracy, following a two-week trial in Boston on Tuesday. 22-year-old Rafael Leoner Aguirre, who…

By David Amoruso

The biggest problem with ill-gotten gains is how to turn them into squeaky clean gotten gains. Because criminal money remains vulnerable to being confiscated by authorities, whereas money laundered clean has no way whatsoever of ever being touched by law enforcement as the recent Panama Papers leak has showed.

Of…

By David Amoruso

Marijuana can now be bought legally in many states in the U.S. but back in the 1980s it was a high-priced and highly illegal commodity. As such it was smuggled into the country by traffickers who…

By David Amoruso

Organized crime syndicates are increasingly getting involved in sports corruption. Fixing a match means a guaranteed lucrative payout by betting on the correct outcome. Criminals operating in this multi-billion-dollar field use different modi operandi and adopt very complex structures, therefore the only successful…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Becoming a gang member isn’t easy. And most gangsters are forced into the gang life because of poverty and a troublesome situation at home. They take to the streets to find a new family and find it in the older guys wearing colors that identify them as part of something bigger.

VICE…

By David Amoruso

Chicago mob boss Al Capone’s story never gets boring. It has been told in many ways and through the eyes of various of his associates and enemies. In Gangster Land, we get to see Capone through the eyes of his infamous…

By David Amoruso

He was the boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia. As leader of the infamous Corleonesi, Salvatore "Toto" Riina ordered the death of hundreds, including the high-profile assassinations of anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Now he is dead himself, at age 87, of natural causes.

Riina had turned 87 on…

By David Amoruso

The year is 1957. A 28-year-old inmate by the name of James Bulger is serving a 20-year prison sentence for armed robbery. That’s a long time to spend in a tiny cell. A doctor proposes the young Bostonian participate in a drug experiment to earn an early release. He accepts.

Why wouldn’t he? Dr. Carl Pfeiffer seems…

By David Amoruso

Follow the money, seasoned investigators will tell you. You’ll never know where it will take you. In the new BBC crime series McMafia the money takes us around the world – from money launderers in Dubai, cyber criminals in India, black marketeers in Zagreb, and …

By David Amoruso

“Always the dollars. Always the fuckin' dollars.” – Nicky Santoro, movie Casino

Authorities in the United States and Canada arrested a total of thirteen alleged members of the Mafia yesterday for their involvement in a largescale drug trafficking pipeline spanning both countries. Among those arrested are…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

A member of Baltimore’s Black Guerilla Family (BGF) pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murdering a witness to prevent him from testifying against a fellow gang member in a pending state case. 25-year-old Wesley Jamal Brown also admitted he was a part of the Black Guerilla Family’s Greenmount Avenue Regime, formerly…

By David Amoruso

It was one of the biggest art heists in the world, the largest one in the United States. $500 million worth of paintings were stolen from Boston’s Gardner Art Museum. Investigators soon found that the theft had the Mafia’s fingerprints on it.

• Read: …

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Two associates of the Genovese crime family’s crew in Springfield, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to extortion-related charges on Monday. 50-year-old Ralph Santaniello and 54-year-old Giovanni Calabrese admitted…

By David Amoruso

A Lucchese family mobster who flipped and helped send dozens of New York wiseguys to prison has been outed as a fraudster who scammed mall owners and developers out of tens of millions of dollars while in the Witness…