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In the late 2000's, the Mexico government put together a list of dozens of Narco kingpins it wanted to bring down. Only one name from that list is not imprisoned or dead, and still sitting stop the Mexican cartel world: El Mayo. Nearing 80, he's never so much as been arrested despite co-founding and then co-leading the Sinaloa cartel for decades.
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Everyone knows El Chapo, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one time most powerful kingpin that Mexico has ever seen. The man who revolutionized the Mexican cartels' drug trade. But...what if he never actually was at the top of the food chain?
Some have long suspected that the head of the Sinaloa cartel has always been Ismael Zambada Garcia, also known as El Mayo. Nearing his 80's, little is known about his early life, but he's always managed to stay two steps ahead of the cartel wars and the police. He's never been arrested. He's always played the background, avoiding the spotlight and letting Chapo get the notoriety even though they cofounded and shared leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel.
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With influencer and living meme Andrew Tate about to face trial in Romania, we dive into his connections to a powerful pair of Mafia brothers and their casino empire—and how the Tates pivoted from MMA to a gang that has terrorized the European nation for years.
We also go deep on the history of Romanian organized crime, from Ponzi schemes to ATM skimming gangs and Europe’s biggest human trafficking syndicate—and show how Romania and the Tates had been on a criminal collision course for decades
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Boris Nayfeld's life is like something out of a movie; orphaned in the former Soviet Union, he served time in a brutal penal colony before establishing himself as a top tier street criminal before escaping for America. No stranger to violence, he got involved in the burgeoning Russian mafia factions rising up in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach during the 1980's.
But he’s way more than just a two bit gangster. He’s been involved in organized crime from Odessa to Thailand to Antwerp, survived 5 assassination attempts, done prison in the US and the former soviet union, and been involved in diamond heists, heroin trafficking, extortion, shootouts, tangled with Russian Thieves in Law…the guy’s name carries weight. And somehow, through it all, he survived when nearly everyone else he came up with didn't.
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Lo Hsing Han was a Burmese narco so powerful that Richard Nixon called him a Godfather. But the Kokang king tried one too many shady deals, sending the Golden Triangle’s heroin industry on a helter-skelter path toward a bloody, 2023 shootout with Chinese cops—at a lawless casino town on the edge of nowhere.
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Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night. And they blew up his house too. And the racket boys, they really did have a fight...a brutal one that lasted decades and saw Skinny Joey Merlino come out on top. He's not just America's next top crime podcaster and patreon star, he's also the one-time boss of the Philadelphia mafia and (allegedly!) still the don of Philly, if you believe the feds.
Merlino, though, is no joke. Surviving by the skin of his teeth and dodging multiple assassinations in the 80's and 90's, he went from the son of shunned one-time underboss Chuckie Merlino to the top position when him and his crew of young gunners took on all comers.
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