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PODCAST

The Underworld Podcast

The Underworld Podcast

Underworld exposes the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run. Journalists Danny Gold and Sean Williams bring their experience reporting on dangerous people and organizations to take listeners on a global tour of mobsters, warlords and crooks - from Brooklyn to Beijing, from the streets to the boardrooms - and everywhere in between. Underworld is a show about heroes, villains, and the barely visible

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

59:13

Cuba: From Lansky’s Casinos to Castro’s Guns

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/10/06

Sean got beaten up in Cuba! To celebrate this, we’ve thrown together a biopoly of crime in the tropics, beginning with the story of how American organized crime flocked to Havana in the 1920s as a Prohibition rum-runner’s paradise. After World War II, mobsters then executed a takeover of Havana, building hotels, casinos, racetracks and bordellos as US tourism sought sun, sand, and vice off the Florida Strait.Chief among all Havana’s crooks were Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, who in 1946 welcomed

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63:46

Stash House: Cartel Wars, Coke Boats, and Gangs Gone...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/09/29

Danny and Sean take another lap around the criminal world, where somehow everything is getting bigger, stranger, and more international. Sinaloa’s cartel war grinds on, Romanian crews allegedly drain millions from American food-benefit accounts, and South Africa confronts organized crime increasingly tangled up with the state.Elsewhere, Sydney’s latest gang war features teenage recruits and drone-assisted hits, Belgian investigators finally wrap a massive cocaine case, and Spanish cops try to

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75:54

Assassination Nation: The Balkan Clan War that Took...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/09/22

In the picturesque Montenegrin port of Kotor, a cocaine trafficking partnership fractured into one of Europe’s bloodiest gang wars. A dispute over a drug shipment in Spain in 2014 split the organization into two rival clans, the Kavač and Škaljari, turning former allies into sworn enemies. What followed was a sprawling campaign of revenge, with gunmen hunting their targets across borders and leaving dozens dead. How did a feud born in a tiny Adriatic town became an international bloodbath with a

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52:21

The Fall & Rise of Pakistan’s Escobar

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/09/15

In our final episode on the rise and fall and rise of the Pablo Escobar of Pakistan, he negotiates his own surrender to the DEA, maneuvers his way into the U.S. while dodging Pakistani intelligence agents out to kill him, and enjoys the hospitality of the American justice system. Then he returns to Pakistan, gets arrested again, and things get weird. Taliban weird.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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65:21

How an Albanian Mobster Derailed MAGA Island

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/09/08

In Albania's turbulent Nineties, the small, seaside town of Vlore became a gangster’s paradise, playing host to hundreds of crooks ferrying drugs, weapons and people into nearby Puglia alongside Italian mafiosi. One of them was a slim, slick-haired former military man named Artur Shehu, who amassed a formidable property portfolio across Vlore — most reckoned, due to his friends in the Sacra Corona Unita, Italy's “fourth Mafia.” But when a 1999 bar gunfight forced Shehu into hiding, only to

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71:06

The Biggest Unknown Drug Dealer in US History

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/09/01

He might just be the biggest US drug smuggler you’ve never heard of. 1.3 billion in product moved. 16 different aliases. Bank accounts in 10 countries. A phantom, and a logistical genius. Stewart Newton quietly built what feds called the biggest ever drug smuggling operation in New England’s history, before suffering the largest ever narco assets seizure in US history. And he did it by leaving his Long Island mansion and going to Pakistan to meet the country’s biggest drug syndicate, the mountain

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44:57

Shafted: How Cartels are Killing for Rare-Earths

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/08/25

Bolivia's Cerro Rico has been spewing out tons of silver for centuries. It was the economic bellows of the Spanish Revolution, whose lust for the precious metal came at the price of some eight million slaves. Some of the empire's earliest gangs formed around the Cerro. They were called ‘Jukus,’ and one man stood above (or below) them all.Today's there's another, modern silver rush at Cerro Rico — and it's being led by the green energy revolution. EVs, wind turbines and data centers are all

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62:35

The Heroin Warlord of Pakistan: Armed Tribesman, the...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/08/18

5000 armed tribesman at his beck and a call. A mountain compound in a lawless territory. A seat in Pakistan’s parliament bought and paid for. And a heroin and hash empire that stretched from the mountains of Afghanistan to million dollar mansions in Long Island. Ayub Afridi started life as a poor, illiterate truck driver in a mud hut and turned a trucking company into a global drug trafficking operation. And once the Soviet Union went to war with Afghanistan, his control of Pakistan’s tribal areas

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65:06

Russian Mercenaries African Drug Empire, Israel’s...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/08/11

On this episode of Stashhouse: Wagner's leftover mercenaries are running a tramadol empire in the heart of Africa, while in Monaco a bomb takes out a Ukrainian tycoon, then someone takes out the assassin. Grenades, the mob, and Japanese food: an Israeli underworld war is being waged on the country's biggest sushi chain. Plus updates on friends of the show Kaz Hamad and Lawrence Bishnoi, two men proving you can run a thriving criminal empire from a prison cell.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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67:51

El Mayo Behind Bars: Cartel War, Conspiracy and...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/08/04

Earlier this month, Sinaloa Cartel mastermind Ismael Zambada García, aka El Mayo, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in growing one of the world’s biggest criminal empires. But while Mayo’s story may be ending, he leaves behind a mountain of unanswered questions. What actually went down on the day of his 2024 capture? Were US agents on the ground running the show? Who ordered the death of a major politician that same day? And who will come out on top, in the brutal Sinaloa civil war

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47:06

Empire of Blood: The Fall of the Godfather of Crime...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/07/28

When his Green Gang goons killed thousands of leftists in 1927’s Shanghai Massacre, Du Yuesheng was welcomed into the political scene of China’s nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. ‘Big Ears Du’ would then take over the country’s biggest city wholesale — running transport, water, electrical grids and even a major bank. All the while Du’s profits from narcotics and vice soared, making him one of the richest organized criminals in world history.But events in Asia were spiraling beyond Du’s

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52:08

China’s Mob King Prepares for War

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/07/21

By the mid-1920s, Green Gang Boss Du Yuesheng had conquered almost all before him — including his own underworld mentor Huang Jinrong. Shanghai’s opium scene, torn open by British gunboats, belonged to him.But the city was about to become the crucible for a far more bloody showdown: one that would define modern China until today. With Communist Party agitators chipping away at his labor force, Du decided to pledge his allegiance to the city’s nationalist forces. And he would do it in terrible,

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48:47

Brazil’s Pablo Escobar: The Ghost

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/07/14

They call him Brazil's Pablo Escobar. Sérgio de Carvalho was an elite Brazilian police major who became one of the most wanted drug traffickers on Earth, accused of flying 45 tonnes of cocaine into Europe with his own private fleet of planes. Along the way he burned through ten fake identities, ran his empire from a prison cell, collected a police pension the entire time, and faked his own death from COVID. Then one morning in Budapest, it all ended over breakfast. Learn more about your ad choices

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55:38

The Last Don: The Godfather Who Turned Rat

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/07/07

In 1992, the New York Mafia is falling apart. The Gambinos are in chaos, the Colombos are at war, the Genoveses are hiding behind Chin Gigante’s bathrobe act, and the Bonannos—the forgotten, disgraced family left for dead after the Donnie Brasco disaster—are waiting on one man: Joey Massino. Known as “The Last Don,” Massino quietly rebuilds the Bonanno family into the most powerful mob outfit in America, using paranoia, discipline, and an almost supernatural instinct for survival. Then, after a

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54:46

The Rise of China’s Biggest Mob Boss EVER

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/06/30

Born into a peasant family on the outskirts of Shanghai, Du Yuesheng grew up an inveterate gambler and opium addict. But as he forged alliances in the growing metropolis’ underworld, members of a secret society-turned-cartel saw promise. Before long, ‘Big Ears Du’ was running gambling dens, opium divans and brothels. And as Shanghai, cleaved into foreign concessions and wildly unequal, became a global megacity, Du knew just who to befriend, best or kill to get his way. And by the mid-1920s, when

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71:49

Chinatown’s Gangster Prince: Shrimp Boy

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/06/23

Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow possesses one of the best mob nicknames out there. The San Francisco Chinatown gangster went from teenage immigrant hooligan from the streets of Hong Kong to one of the most infamous Asian organized crime figures in America. His story has everything: Chinatown tongs, Hong Kong triad influence, immigrant protection rackets, gambling dens, and the violent gang wars that turned San Francisco’s streets into a battleground. Then comes Shrimp Boy’s strange second act, when he

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59:24

Redux: Africa's Pablo Escobar: Ibrahim Akasha

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/06/16

Ibrahim Akasha was the kingpin of East Africa’s heroin highway, setting up a massive tracking empire that stretched from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to Kenya, South Africa and Europe.When he was gunned down in 2000, his sons stepped into the void, hungrier and even more violent...but also, more sloppy. They struck deals with Pakistani mobsters and Colombian cartels, turning Kenya’s ports into gateways for global dope. But their empire crumbled in a DEA sting straight out of a Hollywood

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59:16

Sex, Drugs and Shinto: How the Yakuza’s Only Woman...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/06/09

When Mako Nishimura, the yakuza’s only female member, fell in love with a rival gangster, it would send her on a long and painful path from drug and sex trafficking, to painkiller addiction and finally a role helping ex-yakuza go straight. Her journey would mirror the downfall of the yakuza at-large, from the world’s largest criminal gangs to social outcasts, outwitted by cops and outpaced by new, digital criminals taking over the Japanese underworld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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65:24

Italy Clan Wars, Irish Gangster Politicians & Cartel...

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/06/02

On this week's Stash House: A fugitive Dutch cocaine kingpin dodges capture off the coast of West Africa. An Irish gang boss trades gangland warfare for electoral politics. Mexican officials accused of working for the Sinaloa Cartel surrender to U.S. authorities. A violent mafia feud erupts in southern Italy. Nigerian authorities uncover an industrial-scale meth lab allegedly linked to Mexican cartel cooks. And with the World Cup approaching, Mexico’s cartels reportedly decide that protecting

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62:14

The Rise and Fall of The Yakuza Devil's Child

The Underworld Podcast ·

2026/05/26

Mako Nishimura graduated from high school delinquent to kamikaze biker gang, street tough and, eventually, a fully made member of a yakuza syndicate - the first (or perhaps second?) woman to do so. Nishimura made her gang huge amounts of cash selling women plus selling, and taking, huge quantities of methamphetamines.But by the end of the 1980s, Nishimura’s life was unraveling into a mess of addiction, violence and madness. When Japan’s economic bubble burst at the end of the decade, the yakuza

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137 results

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