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
The Fugitive British Gangster Instagramming His Crimes in Africa: Sam Walker
Sam Walker already had a huge rap sheet in his native Liverpool before 2018, when he took off across Europe and through the Sahara Desert into Sierra Leone - posting on social media the whole time. T…
00:44:40 |
Tue 16 Jul 2024
El Chapo's Sons Built a Fentanyl Empire: Los Chapitos
With El Chapo locked up in a supermax prison and never going home, there's been a battle to maintain the power of his feared Sinaloa cartel. Many thought his sons, groomed to take his place, would fa…
00:49:56 |
Tue 09 Jul 2024
The Deadliest Biker War in History: Hells Angels vs Rock Machine
In the mid 90's, the Quebec Hells Angels made an offer to every drug trafficking organization in Montreal: buy from us or die. The Rock Machine motorcycle club refused to bend the knee, allying with …
00:52:27 |
Tue 02 Jul 2024
The Meth SuperCartels Destroying Tropical Paradise
For years the Pacific region, and its tiny, tropical nations, steered clear of the global meth and cocaine trade. But politics, war and wild profit margins have pushed ships and planes out from Latin…
00:43:52 |
Tue 25 Jun 2024
How the Hells Angels Became Canada's Most Powerful Crime Family
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club first chapter emerged in the US in the 1940's but didn't reach Canada until 1977. Less than 20 years later, they would be neck deep in the bloodiest motorcycle gang w…
00:48:22 |
Tue 18 Jun 2024
El Salvador's War on MS-13: Nayib Bukele Goes Hard
Since 2019, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has smashed the country’s two main gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, throwing almost 80,000 people into megaprisons and implementing a harsh but effective “sta…
00:56:47 |
Tue 11 Jun 2024
India's Gangster Assassins Are Running Wild
When hitmen shot dead Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver last June, Canadian cops blamed the government of India’s strongman leader Narendra Modi. Subsequent assassination plots in NYC…
00:40:30 |
Tue 04 Jun 2024
The Most Corrupt NYPD Detective & His Mafia Uncle w/Steve Fishman
Louis Sarcella might be one of the most corrupt NYPD detectives ever, though he was once heralded as a master at getting confessions on homicides. A slick dressing, tough talking cigar smoker who cou…
00:45:58 |
Tue 28 May 2024
The Gangster Warlords of Haiti's Collapse with Jason Motlagh
Haiti's gangs have effectively taken over the country, plunging into chaos and violence as warring gangster warlords like the infamous Barbeque fight for territorial control. In February gangs storme…
00:44:08 |
Tue 21 May 2024
El Mayo: The Undisputed King of Mexico & the Betrayal of El Chapo
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 M…
00:42:46 |
Tue 14 May 2024
El Chapo's Boss & The Most Powerful Kingpin in Mexico: El Mayo
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…
00:49:16 |
Tue 07 May 2024
Andrew Tate & the Romanian Mob: A Match Made in Criminal Heaven
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 MM…
00:52:07 |
Tue 30 Apr 2024
The Most Dangerous Russian Mobster America Has Ever Known: Boris Nayfeld
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 es…
00:57:53 |
Tue 23 Apr 2024
The Rise and Fall of Golden Triangle Dope: From a Jailed Kingpin to a Casino Shootout
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-s…
00:43:08 |
Tue 16 Apr 2024
Skinny Joey Merlino and The Philly Mob Wars:
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 Merli…
00:46:28 |
Tue 09 Apr 2024
The Zombie Drug Robbery Gangs of Medellin Preying on Dating Apps w/ Toby Muse
Medellin was once the world's most violent city, torn about by Pablo Escobar's murderous cartel warfare and later, Don Berna's meteoric rise to control the city's drug trade. Over the last decade, th…
00:58:34 |
Tue 02 Apr 2024
Kokang Cowboys: Burma’s Transgender Narco Royalty, a Secret Army, and a “Special Belt”
Olive Yang—or Miss Hairy Legs, or Two-Gun Mulan, or any number of nicknames folks gave her—was the gunslinging princess of Kokang who bucked the royal yolk to become one of the Golden Triangle’s bigg…
00:43:03 |
Wed 27 Mar 2024
Digital Hucksters, Crypto Scams and the Internet’s “Enshittification” with Cory Doctorow
From Ponzi schemes to shitcoins, phishing scams and Nigerian princes, we’re living in a golden age of online crime. But hasn’t it always been this way? Cory Doctorow’s latest novel “The Bezzle” dives…
00:57:16 |
Tue 19 Mar 2024
The Most Successful American Mobster EVER: Tony Accardo
Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo aka the Big Tuna (!) was one of the most powerful Mob Bosses that the American Mafia has ever seen, sitting atop the brutal Chicago Outfit for 40 years. From being an erran…
00:54:06 |
Tue 12 Mar 2024
Listen Now: Varnamtown Episode 1
Two years ago, Kyle MacLachlan, the star of Twin Peaks, called investigative journalist Joshua Davis with a strange story. Kyle had heard a rumor that Pablo Escobar did a deal in the early 1980s with…
00:04:08 |
Fri 08 Mar 2024
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