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.
Show episodes
Abe Saffron rose from wartime wheeler-dealing to become the king of Sydney’s underworld, a man whose appetite for sex, money and scandal was unmatched by any other Aussie gangster in the swinging Sixties. Saffron paid everybody off, brought Sinatra to Sydney, and hosted Sinatra. He was, in the words of one reporter, “M
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
For centuries, brigands, gangsters and street toughs ruled the island of Java so thoroughly that they were woven into local myths. But in the 20th century, when the world bounded towards war, mob bosses in Jakarta spotted a chance to turn underworld kudos into an independent nation. When the war ended, and Indonesia do
Amado Carrillo Fuentes was one of the most powerful drug traffickers of the 1990s, moving hundreds of tons of cocaine and amassing billions while forging deep ties with Colombian cartels and corrupt Mexican officials. At the height of his power, he controlled the Juárez Cartel and operated a fleet of private jets, outp
In 1987, Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona was on top of the world. He’d just handed his nation a World Cup, and his club side Napoli its first league title in over 60 years. But Maradona’s hard-partying lifestyle and underworld friends would soon take their toll - and before long, the world’s greatest sportsman was
The 1990's in Moscow were the glory days of Russian organized crime. Emerging out of the downfall of communism, wannabe oligarchs and gangsters turned the country into a free-for-all as they fought for control. And no where, is more deadly than Moscow. In 1992, there was 2,500 murders in Moscow alone. There’s a lot of
