When the Cornbread mafia started to unravel in the late 1980's, the feds had no idea what they had stumbled upon. Within a few years, they had seized 400 million dollars in marijuana grown in 30 locations in 10 states, indicting 70 people. And it all started with some country outlaws.

These men were farmers, mechanics, and handymen by day, and by night, they transformed into savvy businessmen managing an underground empire. They recruited others from the local community, including friends, neighbors, and even family members, creating a tight-knit organization that was as much a fraternity as it was a criminal enterprise.

This is the story of the Cornbread Mafia, This is the story of how a bunch of good ol boys from the same rural county in central Kentucky built the biggest homegrown weed cartel in American history. 

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Alice Guo was a Philippine success story, a homeschooled farmhand who rose to become a millionaire business leader. But when Guo ran for mayor of the small town of Bamban in 2022, eyebrows were raised. Sure, she was rich: but how did Guo own a helicopter, $200,000 jewelry and a McLaren sports car?

Perhaps she really was an industrial savant. Or perhaps there was something a little more sinister going on, perhaps something to do with the giant offshore gambling complex located a stone’s throw from her mayoral office? Raids and a spell on the run followed. Now Guo faces trial for crimes related to one of the most lucrative criminal markets on the planet. But there’s another question, with impacts far beyond Bamban, the Philippines or even Asia.

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You don't earn a nickname like The Lord High Executioner by not killing a whole lot of people. And Albert Anastasia, one of the most psychotic gangsters to ever come out of New York City, was alleged to have participated in at least 60 murders as part of his role as one of the leaders of Murder, Inc., the hitmen organization that Lucky Luciano and the other members of The Commission tasked with doling out mafia justice.

Anastasia's rise to power in the violent mob wars of the 1920's and 1930's is the stuff of mafia lore, but there is such as thing as being too violent, even for someone who became the boss of one of the five families.

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Sinaloa’s capital Culiacan is roiling with violence in the wake of El Mayo’s capture, and his alleged betrayal at the hands of the Chapitos.

But the bloodshed is just part of an ever-changing drug landscape, that’s increasingly dominated by the Sinaloa factions and the CJNG. How do these two organizations work? How can they work together? And what on earth can Mexico’s new president do to stop the bullets from flying? Sean spoke to expert Nathan P. Jones to find out.

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Peru’s Shining Path, a Marxist-Maoist guerrilla force, plunged the Andean nation into a two-decade civil war that put villagers of the VRAEM, a remote, coca-producing region, on its bloody frontline.

The Peruvian government captured the movement’s despotic leader, and the war died. But the rebels switched gears, protecting coca shipments from Peru’s interior to its coast, and out across Latin America.

Today the VRAEM is the global trade’s ground zero — even for the leaves that make their way, via an odd, winding journey, into Coca-Cola bottles worldwide. And the Shining Path, though weakened, are still among the embattled region’s biggest players.

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With their leader sentenced to life in a Dutch prison, the most powerful heroin trafficking organzation in Europe, the Turkish-Kurdish Baybasin clan, wasn't about to call it quits. Younger brother Abdullah Baybasin set out to control the streets of North London with his feared crew of Hackney Bombers. But another powerful gang, the Tottenham Turks, and the met police investigators, had other ideas.

Two decades later, control of Europe's heroin market is once again facing instability, as the Taliban banning opium production in Afghanistan has set the entire market in flux. Hitman are roaming Europe, striking in Moldova, Barcelona, London and elsewhere. But it's not just massive amounts of heroin moving through Turkey anymore, as many of the gangs are connecting with cartels in Latin America and making the switch to cocaine.

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From a village in rural Turkey, Huseyin Baybasin emerged as one of the most powerful drug lords in Europe, setting up a global heroin trafficking ring. Stepping into the vacuum left by the downfall of the French Connection, Baybasin and his clan, dubbed "The Family," brought in billions of dollars of opium from Afghanistan through Iran and smuggled into Turkey before it headed to western Europe on the so-called Balkan route, all with the help of the Kurdish separatist militia known as the PKK.

But he wasn't just your run of the mill drug lord: Baybasin claims he was a Turkish government sponsored heroin trafficker as part of an intricate conspiracy, involving state secrets, a militant guerrilla group waging a 40-year insurrection, massive conspiracies and international intrigue involving the Turkish deep state, spy agencies of multiple countries including Britain, informants, billions of dollars, one of the most powerful criminal families in Europe and Asia, and control of over 90 percent of the heroin flooding into the UK. 

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When Bougainville fought an incredible civil war over a colossal mine, and won, its military leader emerged a hero. But he would soon fall under the spell of a conman and cult leader who wanted the Pacific island—and believed himself to be its king.

The unlikely pair soon carved an empire out of a coconut palm jungle—and a wild, picaresque myth about Eden, ancient monarchs, and gold. The wildest thing was that almost everybody in the region believed it.

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When a bizarre group of international gangsters shook on a massive meth deal with a DEA agent in Bangkok, Thailand eight years ago, it kicked off a manhunt ensnaring Hong Kong Triads, Outlaws bikers and an ex-US Army sniper’s band of contract killers. But the bust also shone a light on the shady drug network of North Korea, part of a crime machine fuelling the world’s maddest dictatorship. This is the story of how a war-torn Hermit Kingdom became a narco-trafficking, cash-counterfeiting, pimping Mafia state.

An Underworld Classic

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Danny and Richard Wolfe were barely even teenagers when they formed the Indian Posse in their mother's basement with a handful of friends, but they had already been living the street life since they were in grade school, robbing, stealing and fighting. Never did they expect that within a few short years, the gang would balloon to hundreds and then thousands of members, taking shape in Winnipeg's poor and violent North End where there was no shortage of poor indigenous teens from broken families looking for brotherhood. Drug-dealing, pimping, armed robberies and murders went along with it.

The Indian Posse exploded into Canada's western prairies in the 1990's and soon came to dominate the prisons, enforcing their reign with brutal violence. This the story of how the Wolfe brothers founded the gang, and then succumbed to its violent nature.

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Jon Lee Anderson is an author and staff writer at The New Yorker. Anderson recently profiled Ecuador’s young president Daniel Noboa for a piece entitled “Ecuador’s Risky War on Narcos”.

Jon Lee spoke about his weeks long visit to the embattled nation, its place in the wider drug world, and how political movements across Latin America have metastasized into the biggest and most violent underworld on the planet.

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