Mickey once said of himself, quote, “I was a pretty fair replica of the devil.” He also killed a bunch of people, and got away with it. A street hustler since he was 6, Cohen gained a rep as a hard-fighting professional boxer despite his short stature, and a rep as a wild-haired stick up kid that never backed down from a gunfight or a robbery.

But when he got the call to head back to LA to serve as the number 2/bodyguard for Bugsy Siegel, everything changed. Under Bugsy, Mickey's statue rose sky-high, and he learned about the organized part of organized crime: legit businesses, using charm instead of guns, high society, and all that. He slept with A list actresses, was known for his insanely expensive wardrobe, ran LA's gambling rackets, high class prostitution, controlled labor unions, extortion rackets, was tied into all the movie studios and had an army of shooters. He mixed with politicians, newspaper editors, and every famous actor, and actress, of the era...all while fighting a deadly multi-year war with Jack Dragna over control of LA and the race wire.

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It’s January 5, 1982, and the central American state of Panama is playing host to one of the most extraordinary narco summits in history. Hosting the pow-wow is Manuel Noriega, chief of Panamanian military intelligence and just a year from siezing its control. Pablo Escobar, head of what will become the feared Medellin Cartel, is there too.

But even these criminal heavyweights aren’t the biggest gangsters in the room. That title belongs to Roberto Suarez Gomez, Bolivia’s so-called King of Cocaine, supplier of Andean coca paste to a global blow industry. Suarez, a former cattle rancher and heir to a rubber fortune, has never been more powerful. Just two years previous he’d backed Bolivia’s so-called ‘Cocaine Coup', tearing through capital La Paz and installing violent general Luis Garcia Meza as president.

Since then Suarez has built the modern cocaine market, cementing Escobar as his chief buyer, and pulling in Noriega and even the Castros of Cuba. But Suarez couldn’t have done all this without the fourth man in this room in Panama, quiet and slight, with a saturnine face that belies the litany of evil he’s managed in his 67 years. This is Klaus Barbie, fugitive SS officer and so-called ‘Butcher of Lyon’

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You might recognize the city of Marseille as the home of one of the biggest drug trafficking operations in history, the French Connection. These days, though, it's no longer Corsican mobsters using France's second biggest city as a transshipment point to move heroin across the Mediterranean. Instead, the last two decades have seen street gangs of mostly North African teenagers warring over retail drug spots that can make over $100,000 a day.

2023 saw nearly 50 narco-homicides, as the French police call them, as a gang known as the DZ Mafia started to take control. And the violence is only increasing, as AK-47's become the guns of choice and 15 year old hitmen are hired off of telegram and paid 20,000 euros to kill other teenagers and then post about it on snapchat.

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When Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon”, escaped Europe at the end of the war and fled to Latin America, he didn’t follow his fellow Nazis into hiding. In fact, Barbie remained on the books of western spy agencies, including the CIA, and reaped enormous wealth, power, and protection.

Barbie then hooked up with the fascists and druglords of Bolivia, christened a death squad called the “Bridesgrooms of Death” — and took the country in a brutal coup backed so far to the hilt by marching powder, that Bolivians still call it the “Cocaine Coup”.

But Barbie’s work wasn’t done there. As reporters and Nazi hunters uncovered his true identity, the fugitive mass-murderer connected Bolivian “King of Cocaine” Roberto Suarez Gomez with the cartels of Colombia, birthing the modern-day blow industry. And he would even become friends with nascent narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar.

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In this holiday special, we get into some of the big stories of the month from Captagon updates, the Gulf Cartel leader and Zetas creator going free, a wild Russian crypto London drug dealing scam, and more!

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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.

For Merch: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/

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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.

MERCH: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/

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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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