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 mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 49 minutes
- Episodes
- 227
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Los Muchachos: Miami's Cuban Cartel
In 1980s Miami, amid the glitz, gunfire, and power boats, two Cuban-American friends Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon, built one of the most powerful drug empires in U.S. history. Known as Los Muchachos,…
00:53:44 |
Tue 22 Apr 2025
The 'Ndrangheta's Notorious Kidnapping Gang Wars
Today the ‘Ndrangheta, Calabria’s clan-based Mafia, is one of the world’s richest and most powerful drug trafficking organizations, worth an estimated $55 billion. But it wasn’t always like that. Fro…
00:48:23 |
Tue 15 Apr 2025
Meet The Chicago Outfit's Most Infamous Hitman
Kurt Calabrese grew up in the Chicago mafia known as The Outfit. His father, Frank Calabrese Sr, was the premier hitman, known for strangling his victims with his bare hands. But Frank didn't just le…
00:42:08 |
Tue 08 Apr 2025
Jalisco’s Death Camp, El Salvador's Mega-prison and Mexico’s Cartel Extraditions
Will Grant, the BBC’s Mexico, Central America and Cuba correspondent, was recently on the ground at Jalisco’s Rancho Izaguirre, dubbed ‘Mexico’s Auschwitz’, and CECOT, Nayib Bukele’s megaprison in El…
01:12:22 |
Tue 01 Apr 2025
Mexico's Most Sociopathic Druglord: El Mencho & CJNG
He’s a recluse, a cockfighting high-roller, a former cop and a maniac. But will Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, aka El Mencho, do what he’s been threatening for years and become the most powerful cartel …
00:53:52 |
Tue 25 Mar 2025
The Most Insane Prison Gang Ever: South Africa's Numbers Gang
South Africa's secretive Numbers Gangs almost defy description; they're one part cult, one part religion, and all parts violent psychopaths. Emerging originally as bandits preying on gold miners and …
00:54:56 |
Tue 18 Mar 2025
Duterte Arrested: Was the Drug War a Cover Up?
Sean Williams reports from the Philippines, where former President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war cost up to 30,000 lives and tore Philippine society to shreds. But was it all cover for his family…
00:49:04 |
Tue 11 Mar 2025
The Last Street Boss of Chinatown: Ghost Shadows Peter Chin
The Ghost Shadows are said to have been the wildest of Chinatown's gun-toting teenage gangs in the 1970's and 1980's, engaging in countless shootouts with their rivals the Flying Dragons and the Whit…
00:57:20 |
Tue 04 Mar 2025
The World's Biggest Arms Trafficker Goes Down Hard
When Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi arms dealer and self-styled world’s richest man, met with US officials to discuss the Ayatollah, it may have seemed like a chance to cash in corporate power for political …
00:48:35 |
Tue 25 Feb 2025
The Dixie Mafia: Gone South w/Jed Lipinski
The Dixie Mafia terrorized the southern US for decades before authorities were finally able to bring them down. Starting off as a loose collective of career criminals who specialized in burglaries an…
00:51:11 |
Tue 18 Feb 2025
The Richest Arms Dealer Ever: Adnan Khashoggi
Adnan Khashoggi was born in Mecca — but his life was anything but pious. The billionaire had multiple wives, girlfriends and armies of callgirls, not to mention gambling sessions and club nights whos…
00:48:51 |
Tue 11 Feb 2025
The Mobster Who Ruled Hawaii & His Brutal Revenge Quest
Michael Miske came from a broken home through years of petty crime to lead a gang of lost boys in Honolulu, cornering its drug scene and befriending cops to build an empire of pain in the Aloha State…
00:56:51 |
Tue 04 Feb 2025
America's Most Dangerous Prison Gang: The Aryan Brotherhood
What started as a small gang of white prisoners in a California state prison in the 1960's is now one of, if not the most powerful prison gang across America, with tens of thousands of soldiers acros…
00:45:41 |
Tue 28 Jan 2025
Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster and the Battle for Los Angeles: Mickey Cohen
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-f…
00:55:58 |
Tue 21 Jan 2025
The Nazi Drug Kingpin, the Biggest Narco You've Never Heard Of & The Cocaine Coup
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 mi…
00:44:16 |
Tue 14 Jan 2025
The Teenage Hitmen of Marseille's Gang Wars
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 F…
00:58:10 |
Tue 07 Jan 2025
The Nazi Fugitive Who Created The Modern Cocaine Cartel & Befriended Escobar
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 weste…
00:50:06 |
Tue 31 Dec 2024
STASH HOUSE: Captagon Craziness, Free Narcos, Russian Crypto Scams, and More!
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, a…
00:43:02 |
Tue 24 Dec 2024
The Biggest American Weed Cartel Ever: The Cornbread Mafia
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 loca…
00:56:26 |
Tue 17 Dec 2024
The Human Trafficking Illegal Casino Kingpin Who May Have Been a Chinese Spy
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 raise…
00:48:27 |
Tue 10 Dec 2024
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