The Underworld Podcast - Crime! Drugs! Cartels! Gangs! Holidays!

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

It's stash house time! We bring you all the news on organized crime, gangs, drugs, cartels and the holidays that you could ever want. And, at the end, Sean shows his feet in a special holiday new years gift to our most loyal fans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. We won to the Underworld podcast where we focus on international organized crime and all the fun stuff that goes with it, bringing you a new episode every week. Even on the holidays, in between

Christmas and New Year's, like a sick compulsion that we have to just keep putting out content, you know? There's something that's going to wrong with us. We really enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. It's thrilled to be here.

But Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year's. Is there anything else? Do people still do? No, I don't know. I have no idea. Happy Mithrest Day.

I don't know. Kwanza. Porni two hosts. Kwanza. No. All right. Cool. Yes.

That's going a while already. All right. Danny Gold. I'm joined by Sean Williams. We are two journalists that have covered these acts, these sorts of stories all over the world. And, uh, and now we bring them to, I guess if you're tuning in and this is your first episode, like don't, like turn it off, you know, yeah, go back to go back, go to one of the real episodes. Do not listen to the holiday episode. Like, I'm begging you, do not judge this podcast based off of this episode. Go back and listen, even to last week to the week before. This is not. This is for the ultras. This is for the, this is for the

hardcore. For the people with nothing else to do. who just like, you know, need this. Today, we are going to be doing a stash house, which is where we go through some of the, uh, the biggest crime stories of the last month or so, but like organized crime stories, gangs,

mafia is not like random murders of young women in like New England towns that, like, the sheriff messes up the DNA or whatever other podcasts are about. We wax poetic a bit. We have some fun. It's kind of like our impression of like another, of most other podcasts where they talk about like what they had for lunch or or the fact that they almost had to go to the bathroom in their pants in a taxi,

things of things of that nature. So it's just, you know, our way of getting out content in this week where no one's paying attention. As always, bonus episodes, which include extra segments, interviews and the occasional stash house like this at patreon.com,

such a new world podcast. Sign up on Spotify, sign up on iTunes, YouTube, all that, underworldpod.com for merch, shirts, hats,

hoodies. Look at you bobbing, make sure that you get an image of Sean just bobbing, head along to this right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com, if you're looking to advertise with us or just send us some feedback or tips. No cold open. Do you want to talk about your holiday plans at all? I was just thinking about how good this podcast could be if we talked about what we ate yesterday, if just how much easier I could make money if I had charisma. But I don't know, what's going on?

I'm going to talk about cricket and darts almost constantly for the next month. So it's best that we get this show out the way before I start boring. everyone within a 10-mile radius. Yeah. So, yeah. Shout to the question was no. Just won on the darts. That was incredible.

Yeah. That's all I got. That's all I got. I don't sleep. I change nappies. Occasionally, I get close to poo in my pants as well over Christmas, and that's about it. All right. Do you want to kick us off here with a story, or should I go?

I mean, I guess I'll start because I just wanted to kind of like look ahead to the new year. Because I've probably teed this up about a billion. times, but I'm actually moving to South America next year. Did you know that? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. I don't think I've mentioned it more than a thousand times. But I guess like we did that show on Venezuela and I did a couple of shows on Honduras recently.

Given I'm going to be out there next year, I kind of want to like focus on a lot of this. So we could kind of, I don't know, we could take a look back and then I look forward, point to the big stories of 2025. So we've got, I mean, you know, obviously Venezuela, but also the pardon of Honduras is narco president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, J.O.H in early December, which is pretty crazy. If you did listen to that recent two par on Honduras, which you should go back and do, it's really interesting.

It goes from the bag snatcher to a narco matchmaker, which I didn't realize at the time was pretty good, that's a pretty good lyric. Juan Matabaysteros and the history of coups and corporations that led to the rise of the Cachiros, which are these like crazy redneck rural California. farmers who become the country's biggest criminal gang. They're kind of like the guys from Ozark. You know, they're kind of like redneck baddies in Ozark who are really, really cool.

You will know if you listen to that show how closely on Duran politics has been in bed with cartels, just going back like pretty much forever in the country's history. Hernandez, by the way, if you didn't know already, he's convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, well, in March 2024 for weapons and drug smuggling. his brother Tony, arrested in Miami in 2018, convicted the following year of drug trafficking. Plus, he was using the cash to buy off Honduran politicians and fund his brother's political party. And that bunch of cash includes a million bucks that come directly from El Chapo Husman in return for information about US raids on drug planes in and out of Honduras, which is a, that's like pretty up and down corrupt. So if you're a DA top brass right now, you've probably got steam coming out of your ears.

And I guess it's like sort of underestimated, I think, just because everyone's focused on the news of him getting out. But like just how deeply involved in the drug trade, J.O.H. was. And I guess probably still is. I mean, you don't just sort of like give up on that. He also led a coup himself, let which hunts of oppositions. He stole a vote. So he's not a cool guy, but he's been accepted by kind of regional allies and administrations up north. And then Trump has cited directly to a Honduran presidential election that's being recounted.

as we record this. It's going to be out of date as you're listening to this show. But yeah, there's like kind of loads of unrest over US interference, drugs. It's going to be like a real big story. And then what does he do? What do you do if you are the former president of a country, you go sent to prison for a long time, then you get pardoned? Does he go to like the south of France and hang out, like former dictators used to do or is he going back to the country to like get involved and stuff? Like what's what's his plan? Miami?

Miami. It's probably Miami. It's probably Miami. Yeah. It's not all of our plans. It's hopefully Cancun has a class. I don't know.

I'll go anywhere, man. Take me literally anywhere. But I saw a new story the other day that was one of the Honduran prosecutors is trying to form a case against him when he gets back. But isn't that kind of double trouble, like double jeopardy?

I don't know. I don't know if that exists in Honduras. Yeah, Chapardo doubly. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. My Spanish is a bit rusty for South America, dude. Yeah, yeah, I'm there, man. I've had two hours of lessons.

Just keep throwing things like that. Eo on the end of like words, if you don't know them in English, they love that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just reading half of these sentences that will work. But yeah, like it's really interesting because you don't get yourself out of the game, right? And you don't just disappear. And these pals are running for presidency. see. So I don't really know what happens next. I mean, we've got a show coming out that you guys

maybe will have listened to, will have, are about to listen to about Suriname, about a guy who just keeps failing up over about 50 years. And he came in and out of politics. So I guess in that part of the world, I think you can get a 45 year sentence and still do pretty well. But yeah, I mean, looking ahead, like the stuff on Venezuela is nuts. Obviously, it keeps going up and up. But I think, I don't know, man. Like, it's like, it's like, The thing to look out for here, right, is that the US administration is looking to form alliances or, like, install leaders across Latin America who share its values. So we all have an 80s throwback, don't we?

And this doesn't get, it just doesn't get more 80s than what is going on right now, right? And we're going to be getting used to narco trafficking, being the vanguard for a bunch of, like, politics looking into 2026. I mean, in Argentina, you've got Millet and Chile, this new guy cast. And they're both pretty much the same guy, just with slightly different hair. and they're Pally with the US and trying to re-realitate the right-wing hunters back in the Cold War. But in Chile's case particularly, and I'm hoping to get out there and do some stuff on this, actually. Cast won his election by calling out organized crime.

Like, that was the biggest thing in the election. And in particular, Venezuela's Trender Agua, in case you think I'm denying these guys exist, because I get loads of people in my DM saying, like, why do you love Venezuela? I've never been there. It might be nice. I think it probably sucks. But yeah, they do exist. And in Santiago to Chile, particularly they've been running stash houses, massive brothels,

like loads of sex trafficking and politically motivated murders that I think I got into in the show about them like a year, year and a half ago as being at least helpful to Maduro, if not ordered by him entirely. So, yeah, I'm going to make a little prediction for 2026. I think you're going to hear a lot more noise about Colombia. and I think you're going to hear a lot more about like cartels and coca production in the Andes in Colombia because A, it hasn't got a grip on it ever, despite like I think $30 billion from the US flying in in the late 90s and early 2000s. I mean, why would it? No one's ever found a suitable crop substitution

and Bogotard doesn't want a bunch of, I don't know, Campesino Marxist militaries running around its interior again. And B, Gustavo Petro, Colombia's president, big Trump critic, leftist. It used to be a Marxist guerrilla himself, he's a poet, and he's been massively outspoken about US actions in Venezuela, and there are parliamentary elections there in March. So I think once Venezuela dies down, right, and I think it will, I think you'll see Marco Rubio and others pivot to Colombia, for intending the troops and then the fentanyl stuff is going to come up again. I don't know. Colombia, I think he's going to lose that election.

Do you think it's going to lose? Well, I mean, if it does, then that's, that sort of out. I don't think it's fair also to compare the guy in Chile to Malay. I think Malay is a lot more reasonable. And Malay is a lot more focused on economics with like, you know, strategies and things that. He's an economics like professor, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You might not have a somewhere with like his, like, I'm not a libertarian, but I think that he is a lot more knowledgeable than castes when it comes to this sort of stuff.

You know, like his, and his focus was strongly economic, you know, that that's what he wanted to pull Argentina out of like the downfall that's been in for decades. And they also called the corruption unlike the previous administration. So I think he's, I don't know that much about Cass, but I don't like, from what I've seen, Malay is, is, I would assume he's a bit more serious and like where he stands and what he's doing, even though he has the hair and the sideburns. And the chainsaw, yeah. Yeah, the chainsaw is kind of good prop. Yeah.

Chainsaw is a solid fraud. Okay. You, yeah, you knock me out with your predictions. I just want to talk about Chinese gangs in Italy. Do you hear about this? No. You know, if you're like me, you have a lot of Italian fashion items on your holiday wish list. But I'm sorry to tell you that Chinese crime gangs, as they call them in the headlines, are all over there.

So even your Dolce and Gamana right now, it's probably being like Timo level quality because it's, there's this ongoing trial that's been going on in Italy for like, or case for 15 years. I didn't know anything about this for 15 years. Massive trial, it's been delayed for so long because prosecutors suspect it might be being sabotaged, which is the maternal question that comes up a lot when it comes to Italy. Is it gross incompetence and laziness or organized crime-related sabotage? The case actually got underway in 2010. The whole country, Italy. Yeah, I don't think went to trial until 2018, but it got underway in 2010 after two Chinese men

were hacked to death. And apparently these gangs, these Chinese criminal gangs, I don't know if it's triads or who's tied in, but they run the logistics of Europe's multi-billion dollar fashion industry out of this one city in Italy. So you had with the trial documents disappearing, interpreters quitting in the middle of the trial like abruptly, this is from the article. It was in Reuters, quote, when the latest court interpreter failed to show up at a hearing at the end of September, a quick check revealed that she had returned to China and her transcripts were incomprehensible and unusable. The translator was the second to walk off the job and no other Chinese interpreter in Tuscany has agreed to take over. So there is widespread suspicion that shocker Chinese authorities are also involved. And the sort of stuff that's ongoing, quote, The violence prosecutors hope to curb has only intensified as a trial flounders,

with the battle for control of code hangar production and fast fashion freight spawning, a string of bomb and arson attacks in Italy, France, and Spain. There have been only 16 attacks, including cases of the destruction of property, since April 2024, according to a Reuters tally of official reports. So this town in Italy, which is Europe's apparently the hub for like textile manufacturing, 7,000 or so textile and garment companies. And get this, 4,400 are Chinese owned. Whoa.

It's crazy. It's a chemo of, uh, application of quality everywhere, man. Quote, the China truck investigation closed in 2018, so it closed in 2018 didn't start then, with prosecutors alleging that the 58 suspects had formed, a criminal association equipped with very significant financial means, with support and resources abroad. Seven years on, not a single defendant or witness has been called to testify.

Meanwhile, the alleged mastermind described by investigators as boss of bosses, slipped back into China in 2018 after he was released from pretrial custody and prosecutors doubt he will ever return daily, which of, of course. So it's crazy, like these Chinese gangs essentially.

And I looked into it. I couldn't find whether it was triad affiliate, but I assume it is. that control like the Italian fashion industry from Italy, like not from China, which I assume that all the fast fun fashion companies operating. China have organized crime times as well. This is in Italy,

which is kind of nuts to me. Yeah, that's crazy. I guess I assume Prado is near Milan would be my estimate. I should probably have looked at it up before this episode, but like we said, it's the holiday week, man. Give us a break. And so it's northern Italy. And obviously the criminal nations.

Yeah, yeah. It is Milan. Yeah. Like, you know, the Chlobrians, the Sicilians, everything is in the South. But you would think they would have a big presence in the North where the money is. And, you know, obviously they're getting a run for their money with the, with the Nigerians in the South and trafficking. But it looks like in the North, too, they're being edged out by these Chinese organizations that are in taking control. I wonder if they work in tandem.

I wonder if the Italian organized crime groups are getting paid off. But it's kind of a fascinating story that I wish we had time to look more. more into, but you know, got to get this out there. I mean, if you, I'm just looking at the prices here, if you paid $20,000 for a handbag, I don't, I don't mind if you get pined off by a Chinese organized criminal. I don't think it's that. I think it's more the quicker ones, you know, that are doing that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess that was a plot point in, in, in Gomorra in the early seasons, those sort of like, um, sweatshops, essentially that were claiming to be Italian-made, but they just have like, you know, Chinese factory workers in there. Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, it kind of moves on to something that I'm going to look into next year. I mean, it's going to be a show that I'm going to do in the next few weeks, I think, a guy that I met in New York when I was there, what, last month. He's like an ex-intelligence guy. I'm going to do a story about like Hong Kong triads and the history of China spy masters and Xi Jinping and a country, like,

and a current batch of scammers. illegal gambling dons, drugs smugglers. And it's like focused on Asia and the Pacific, right? Where Beijing is like all over the place, um, doing all kinds of stuff led by crime, same like politics, crime crossover. Um, and like I think you might remember that we did a show.

I think it's going to be about a year ago like about the Philippine mayor who's a scammer and a Chinese asset. And then I did a show when I was in, uh, what's it called, Saigon with Nathan and Lindsay about Thai. Burmese, Cambodian gangsters, like causing real life wars in Southeast Asia. A lot of that is like quarterbacks by Chinese organized criminals. And then, yeah, so I'm going to meet this guy. We're going to talk about a particular island in the Pacific and a giant kind of,

it's like a King's Roman casino, has been going for years and years. And it's become like a downtown of Chinese money laundering. It's a really weird place. And I want to like tear it up too much. I wanted to be a bit of surprise. We should get into that. Yeah. Yeah, we should just.

get into it like my money money laundering seems like so massive like how yeah it's just it's gigantic it's uh growth industry i think it's i mean it's like hundreds of billions if not a trillion dollars i think it is someone it's going to be upset at trillions by now more so than hotels uh yeah and and for sure green gang dude got to get on that green gang and i was gonna say all that final stuff the white whale of the green gang um and like the opium wars i want to do a show on the opium wars yeah yeah disappear at my house for Great stuff. Okay.

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Chopos kids, man. Snitching out. Yeah. You know, they finally took plea deals and went into detail on what happened with El Mio's kidnapping and capture. Second generation, man. Something that we were speculating on wildly for a while and apparently speculating wrongly if what he says is true, which I imagine it might be.

So, Joaquin Guzman Lopez walked into court in Chicago in December. I think December 2nd, got the orange jumpsuit on, looking good. And when the judge asked him what he did for a living, he just said drug trafficking. You know, didn't miss a beat. I think it got some laughs in the courtroom, which, you know, good for him for displaying that forthright honesty right there. And then he basically told them what happened in his 35-page plea agreement that he orchestrated this like completely bonkers operation to snatch his father's longtime partner.

And, you know, I think BFF. I imagine they were best friends. Yeah. Ismail El Mio Zimbada, who, you know, we've talked about in many episodes, probably one of the greatest cartel minds of all time, been under the radar for decades and decades, never been caught, essentially running the Sinolaa cartel next to Chapo, but kind of maybe higher up than he was, at least maybe more successful because he didn't have to get arrested and break out of prison like three or four times.

And it's like a kind of movie thing, you know, he called El Mayo to have to. have a meeting with some local politicians on the outskirts of Kulia Khan, which is, you know, in Sinolaoa, the capital city, their stronghold kind of normal before the meeting. He has his guys kind of removed the glass and the windows, these floor-to-ceiling windows. Mayo shows up. I don't know if he was suspecting anything. It's weird that he wasn't. Our men came in through the window, grabbed him through a bag over his head, zip-tied him,

hauled him onto a plane. They give him sedatives during the flight. So he, you know, keep him kind of docile, even though he's like 75 years old. I think suffering from a whole bunch of ailments, so probably didn't need to drug him to keep him, keep him, you know, under wraps.

And, uh, plane lands in New Mexico and an airport near the Texas border. Boom, they're both in U.S. custody. Uh, one of the politicians,

Maya thought he was meeting with was killed, I think, or later found dead within the same week. So that kind of tells you everything you need to know about how it happened. And Guzman obviously set this up way ahead of time. Probably, uh, you know,

I assume he was in cooperation. with the U.S. authorities. It wasn't just the show good faith, though. Obviously, that's a big part of it. He handed them, like, the biggest fish in the cartel. Well, maybe Mencho is bigger at this point, but just handed it to him on a silver platter, betrayed his dad's long-time partner. But, you know, how it goes in that world. That's what they do to each other. And it worked. You know, his lawyer said his plea deal lets his client avoid an automatic life sentence. And they're saying the mandatory minimum is 10 years. which if he gets 10 years anything less than 30 years

is insane and that's if he keeps cooperating and they consider reducing a sentence even further which is insane so the moral of the story is just always snitch like snitch no matter how high up you are

there's somebody higher give them up because he's already admitting to moving like tens of thousands of kilograms of kilos of drugs you know fent heroin coke meth everything 90 keys of marijuana which I mean who care 90,000 keys of marijuana, which who cares, but like 36 offense, whatever.

Most of it coming through the underground tunnels. He's forfeiting 80 million as part of the deal. He's basically giving like giving long, like long intricate details of how Chapitos operate and all that, which is crazy because I think two of his brothers are still out there, right? And obviously the fallout. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The fallout from the arrest has led to like a brinket. brutal civil war in Sinaloa between Los Chapitos, his brothers, and Mayo's kids and loyalists

and everything. I think there's been something like close to 600 murders in three or four months. And again, he's not the first one to flip. Ovidio, his brother pled guilty in July to similar charges after he was caught. So two of the four cooperating with the feds, I don't know exactly how many are still there, but essentially the U.S. prosecutors are dismantling the Sinaloa cartel leadership. left, left and right. El Chapo is still in a superax prison.

He's serving life. Two of the kids are snitching. The other two brothers are still at large. I think one is relatively quiet and one is still involved. But I guess that's the end of the cocaine industry then, right? Yeah. Yeah. Completely, completely finished.

Yeah, that's like such interesting stuff. We've got to do a few shows on that. I also want to do some stuff on like Brazil, right? Because there's so much heat on a lot of these gangsters all over the rest of Latin America. Not a lot is coming down on Brazil. So there's the, what, there's the PCC, the first capital command in Sao Paulo. We did stories on that. We did a sort of explainer on them, you know, like the history and everything like that.

There's the Red Command you've also done stuff on them. Not a lot of late heat going on these guys. I mean, they're just like operating pretty freely in the Amazon as well, running drugs through all the countries north of Brazil. Again, like Suriname is a big place for that. It's becoming even bigger at the moment. And then there's also a group called the Crime Syndicate of Rio Grande do not or I don't know how to do the Portuguese, but like that is in the northeast of the country.

But there's also, and I'm really going to look into this next year when I'm down there, like in Rio Grande do Seoul, which is the one right down the bottom that borders Uruguay, there's gangs forming between Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, which is really, really interesting. There was a great story at El Pace recently about Bitcoin mining out in the Paranar River in Paraguay, and they're stealing everyone's electricity. But there's no way, I swear, there's no way they're doing that without, like, cartel involvement. There's got to be someone involved in that that's running drugs. You still make money, Bitcoin mining?

So I want to look into that. Sorry? Can you still make money, Bitcoin mining? Apparently so. You just got to find a cheap place where you can just like tap into the local energy. I think that's why they're doing it in the middle of nowhere in Paraguay. They've like nixed a bunch of these villages power. So everyone's just living in Channies with no light.

All the big companies that were set up to do Bitcoin mining like in the U.S. Just got bought to, I think like AI companies that need the energy. You know, so they just turned off the Bitcoin mining. I think. I haven't looked into that too much. I assume they turn off the Bitcoin because they can't. You do both. So I assume they turn off the, like the core scientific,

the core weave thing, which is interesting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, I want to look into that. I want to track down your buddy, Sebastian Marcette as well. I mean, he's on the run somewhere. He won't have gone too far, right? I feel like you could hang out with him.

Yeah, at a game. Imagine that. Or play a match. Play a match. Oh, man. That's like the old footage of, uh, of Boris, not Boris. Um, Semien, Simio and Mogulovich. Or he's playing chess on the roof.

with the BBC reporter. Yeah, that is badass. Do you think you're... Do you think you're... Do you think you're better than him? I reckon I was better than him,

but I think he's better than me now. You guys could do it like how... Because he was playing a second division football, to be fair. Back and forth. You know? Yeah. We could do little keep-y-ups. We can make it.

That would be the most viral thing that we ever do is me doing keep-y-ups in Montevideo with Sebastian Marcette. How hard could it be? Just show up and start asking questions. Everyone loves an English guy. Just be as belated as possible. Yeah, they love us in Argentina. We're big buddies.

He's not Argentine or is he? No, no, he's Uruguayan. I just kind of lumped them in. I mean, we must have pissed them off as well, right? At some point. Yeah, I'm sure. Pissed everyone off. Oh, I'm another story.

I want to do a thing about sport quickly because there's another sport that's like called my eye. All right, let me do an interesting one first. Let me do an interesting word first that you could go. All right, all right, all right. Go on, go on. All right. So our buddy Ryan Wedding, the Canadian snowboarder Olympian, turned a drug cartel in Presario.

Although Olympian, we talked about this. He got like 23rd place. Like, come on, man. You know, I guess participation trophy, right? You can just fold down the hill get that. He's in the news again. Lots of reckless exaggerations with this one. Owen Grill actually had a substack about how the guy's not exactly Al Chapo, even though he's being compared to that because, you know, headlines.

hand lides work. We would probably do that in the headline to get attention. So fair play to people that are doing that. But yeah, he just got, I think, another massive indictment. He did some gnarly things that were just revealed in this indictment, including the execution-style murder of a federal witness in Columbia. Though I guess we knew that that happened, but like he was just indicted for it. And his lawyer got dinged up, which is hilarious.

Watch him too much better call Saul. So here's what went down, January 20, 2025. he had to take care of the witness. And by take care, I mean to have murdered. And he put a bounty on the guy's head. The guy was in Medellin, which is not the smartest place to be if you are testifying in a federal drug cartel case. You don't want to be in the city that even though it's a lot calmer than it was that's known for that. Like go to go to Switzerland.

I don't know. Don't hang out in Colombia. So the details are sort of like out of a movie, right? him and his crew, they use a Canadian website called The Dirty News, and I'm pretty sure news is spelled with a Z at the end, which is like, you know, one of these crime blogs, which law enforcement has since sees

to post photographs of the witness and his wife so they could be identified and located, which is pretty, pretty wild, you know? Yeah. It's on Twitter. It's like all around regularly. I just post it on social media. It'll just pop up in between the Nazi posts. So think about this, though.

They weaponized like a gossip website, a crime gossip website, to get this idea on where this guy is and what's happening. And then there's surveillance footage that they have for the trial from the Colombian police, which shows like how the hit goes down. You got a guy in a bike who shows up kind of following the guy. He's a scout. Then another guy shows up. Tall, thin, white guy in blue jeans, dark hoodie baseball cap, white shoes, gets out of the backseat of a car, walks to an open window behind where the victim is sitting, fires five shots into the back of the guy's head with a side. silence handgun, kills him, hops on a different motorcycle, speeds off, and then another guy shows up who had been doing recon work, he comes back and takes photos of the crime scene to sort of prove

that they did. Wedding apparently paid 500K for this. So, yeah, so 18 other people are charged in the indictment, which is among them his lawyer who apparently advised him to kill the witness, which is... I mean, you know, maybe it's the best advice. I think client attorney privilege goes out the window in that situation. They also charged the guy who co-founded and operated the dirty news website who took payment from wedding for not posting about him and instead posted that photo or the victim, which, you know, if you're running a crime block, you can't get paid off to not. Although we would, you know, no, no, no, it's just in that way.

You were like, don't, don't do an episode on us. How much? What are we doing? I don't think we'd encourage murder. but like, you know, we're for sale. Well, wait, okay, okay. We should probably end that bit. And then apparently,

then Diamond says he's responsible for 60 metric tons of cocaine annually from Columbia through Mexico into the U.S. and Canada, billion dollars a year in profit. Kasputel was talking about him, calling it one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations

in the world. He's now on the top 10 most wanted list, $15 million reward for his capture up from the original $10 million, and they believe he's hiding in Mexico on a protection from the Sunililatal cartel, which we knew already. State Department's offering up $2 million each for information leading to the arrest of the three assassins whose faces are on those surveillance footage. There were a raid in November.

Has anyone looked in Aspen for this guy? Has anyone looked up any mountains? I mean, those are the hate men who I doubt are in America. A bunch people bagged up in these November raids. So total people arrested now, I think, or indicted in his organization is 35. Holy shit. Yeah.

We should do another show about that. Yeah. I don't know if there's enough, but now you can do your cricket or darts, corruption, just whatever it is. Oh, you're so close. You're so close. Have you heard of Kabadi? Billiards?

Billiards? What? Say it again? Kababi? Kababi? It's like Kabadi. It's like, um... Of course not, too.

It's the South Asian game that's like a kind of, um, I guess it's like a mixed between tag wrestling and then you have to say Kabadi over and over again while you're doing it. So you have to hold your breath. And it sounds awesome. I would gamble on this. So good. It kind of looks like Dodgeball in a bit. But there's, I'm going to, I just want to pitch this as a story.

But there's a last week, one of the top players got murdered in the city of Mahali, which is in Punjab. And yeah, it's like spilled out into this whole world of like match fixing and organized crime. like criminal syndicates, like Sikh criminal syndicates, getting involved in Kibati. It's like big business out there. I mean, everything is. This is up your alley, dude. Yeah, this is right in the wheelhouse. You know, there's these teams playing in like 15,000 seats at stadiums now.

There's like a pro league. And every time they're saying like that in India, it tends to get, well, yeah, it's just fixing all over the place. And I'm just wondering whether there's like an angle that we were talking about the other day about like Sikh nationalists and like the underworld in that part of the, in that part of the country. Because, I mean, we've done stuff about Goldie Bra, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I talked about him one of those episodes. That guy's great character.

I just talked, we just talked about in one episode. What did I just do where we talked about Goldie Barra? Or maybe an update actually, Nastash house. We were speaking about, um, oh, when you were talking about the Iranians and then, and then like the Indian government using gangsters to like off, off. Yeah, but even before that I was talking about Goldie Bra for some reason. But he's in the Muswal episode. We talked about him in, oh, he killed.

someone else recently and it was a recent stash house, I think, in a bonus episode. Yeah, this stuff is like super interesting with the Kabadi. So initially, this shooting, which is in broad daylight in the city of Mahali, which is like this planned city next to Chandigar. Anyway, it turns out that a lot of these people are associates of like Goldie Bra and they've been involved, allegedly involved in like the Musi Waller killing. and other stuff that goes with it. But now the police aren't sure whether it's to do with that,

whether it's just general gangland control of this sport that's coming up in the world. So I think it's like a really, really interesting case, actually. And I'm sure there'll be some shady rush in there doing something as they are want to do. But yeah, I think that's one that I'd actually like to go and do because it's great. You should. I think a fun thing to do if you were a bunch of homies in this region of India where they play Gadda. is to like organize like a tailgate thing and be like kebabi and kaddi or kaddi and just like get a bunch of the bros and just eat kebabs and watch kaddi like that sounds awesome to me i bet it'd be i mean these these teams have great names as well there's like the what's it the dabang deli gujurajas i like gujurajuns i like that's kind of cool um telego titans are there jerseys yeah yeah they have like i don't know i guess they just look like darts shirts they just uh it's pretty cool man, I'm going to start watching it.

I'm going to get into it. This time next month we're going to be like talking about Prokabody League bets. I mean, I'm already wasting. Oh, this will air afterwards, but, you know, I put a substantial amount of money down on Anthony Joshua just to win, which is like not even paying off. He's going to win. It's the most insane thing ever. He, like, there are guys in my old gym who could beat Jake Paul.

He is not a legitimate, I mean, he's a good, great, good amateur fighter, I think. Maybe he could be ranked like in the top like 300 in pros for a cruiser weight. But like that's like 300. You know, and he's fighting a guy who was fighting Tyson Fury two years ago, Ussick three or four years ago. Like he's not fighting a guy who's at if this fight does not end. And he's also got 30 pounds on him.

If this fight and like a doesn't end in the first three rounds. And I still, I still, there's a part of me that's like it's too big. It's too insane. It's too insane that I wanted to make that bet. Because it pays one to one on a knockout on the first two rounds. I mean, that has to happen.

That has to happen. If it doesn't happen in the first three rounds, it is the most rig corrupt thing that's ever existed. I mean, Joshua did like, Joshua, like, knocked people out in the first round for about two or three years of his career at the beginning. And they were pro fighters. So he was heavy wage, he was a heavy age. He could actually murder. Yeah, he could seriously give him brain damage. The fact that's happening.

And they're allowing it to happen. And that sanctioned is insane. He could give him, like, any boxing, anyone getting hit by Anthony Joshua got a brain damage. Jake Paul is not, even if he's juice to the gills, dude. Like, it is insane to think he would last more than six minutes with a professional heavyweight, let alone one who's probably top five ranked right now in the world. It is insane. Yeah.

I mean, this year I read the fight old Norman Mailer's book about the rumble in the jungle. My God, man, boxing is. gotten shit since then. It's so annoying. I know, I love it as well. I love it. I'll watch it all the time. When the job gets tough,

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Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Differ. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to the that exact day in history, from killer cannibal brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with

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And remember, stay safe. All right, crime story. I just, I just want to talk about this, the gambling. Like, it's just an insane thing to happen for anyone who even, like, I'm not a, like, super intense boxing fan, but to anyone who has any knowledge of the sport

whatsoever, like this is, the fact that this is happening is insane. Anyway, last one at least, I don't know if you have any more. Memphis, Tennessee, never been, really wanted to go. Walking Memphis, great song, makes me emotional. Barbecue there sounds fantastic. Also, one of, if not the most murderous city in the U.S. last few years, I think last year, it had 300 murders for a population of 600,000.

It has a clip St. Louis, I think, in murder rate. I think it was number one. Well done Memphis. Yeah. But there's a new task force the last few months. You know, they're going, they're going a little Buceli style. Obviously, it's America, so you can't go full Buceli. They've arrested 400 gang members in the past two or three months, I think,

taken 637 illegal guns off the street. There's something like 4,000 arrests in September through this task force, just sweeping everything up. Murders have gone down 40%. Robberies down 60, car theft, 70%. Um, you know, America's Malmo. What can, what can you say? How much it costs to get there? Why don't you go down there?

I would go nuts for an episode. To show about this. Yeah, it'd be amazing. We're making okay money now, but not enough for me to like spend it to go down to spend a, you know, because a flight is America, dude. A flight is going to cost you. Like me flying to Memphis is like you flying or in the UK, you're flying to like, I don't know, Latvia. Moscow. You know, it's going to run you like 600 bucks.

Then you got five nights of a, of a. of Hampton Inn, you know, and food. Okay. We can make this happen. So anyone who's going to put Danny up on the way, and then we can just greyhound him all the way from New York to Memphis over like. Not gray. That would be so cool.

I'm not at that point of my life anymore. What was I saying? Yeah, all the classics are there. Gangster disciples, vice lords, various blood and crypt factions. Pretty crazy action. 15 murder suspects wrapped up in this. So major, major cast force. It is like incredible, though, to think like, there are a bunch of cities with murder problems like this.

Why are they not task force just going this hard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, what does it take so long? St. Louis, I think, has cleaned up a bit, but like this should be a thing that happens fairly common when you have such a high murder rate in the U.S. and there are resources for this sort of thing. So we'll see what happens there. But, yeah, anything else on your end? I mean, like, do people want us to go to places?

Because next year I'm going to be able to go places for like the price of a packet of cigarettes. So like I don't know, do people want me to go to a Paraguay and Uruguay and I would want to go too, but it only makes sense if you're doing it and you have someone else paying your expenses. Yeah, that's not an app for us. You know, like if you have a magazine, like I've done episodes of stuff or like magazine in some of places, but at this point it's like I'm not going to like we don't have the resources to do that at this moment. But yeah, you should. And on that note, the Patreon's flying. Patreon.com slash normal. It is, it is doing a little bit better.

But, yeah, anything else you want to, you want to add in this long, rambling episode? I mean, no, there's just stuff coming up next year, but we can, we can tease it out in the next few episodes. So I think, uh, we got, we get to kill a little bit more time. What are we at?

We're at like, uh, 30, 30 something minutes. What we got? There's a, there's a really, really cool story that I read recently. Um, I'm going to interview. you the guy who did it, who's a very young. I mean, this takes a bit of guts, actually. Guy is like, I think he's Czech, but he's now basing himself out of Sierra Leone. And he's doing a story about how Dutch criminals are like parking themselves up in Sierra Leone and getting involved in a diamond trade. Remember Sam Walker, the clownish liver-podian guy who was getting into

diamond mining, but also, you know, allegedly making water worlds for villages and stuff. He left a lot of mean comments about you. he he remember yeah but did i say this on the show that he sent me a picture of my mom and dad's oh pictures yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but it was like a google image church picture wasn't it like a google google image church picture yeah i mean yeah it was a google street view of my mom's dad's house at least someone sent someone out to take an iphone photo yeah oh man not very nice but um yeah he was also the one who was uh trying to make a video in malaga after those two scottish gangsters got killed and then they just came up to him on the street and beat him nearly to death with a golf club.

So I don't know how he's doing at the moment. He did throw in my boy. He did throw in my boys. So I'm allowed to laugh at him getting beat up, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Fuck him.

Yeah. But Sierra Leone, man. Like, it's really interesting. There's a bunch of Dutch gangsters. One of them was, um, one of them came up in my research with Sue Ann. Like he's a really big deal. I think he's called Leidikers. Um, he's been doing a bunch of stuff with the, with the politicians in Sierra Leone, basically

trying to turn it into like a guinea bisout basically for yeah i mean there's a lot of shady hesbola stuff in that part of west africa yeah yeah there's a money getting washed uh you know uh drugs coming through diamond stuff weapons all that sort of stuff like that that's a hub for sure yeah yeah so well i was speaking to him in around like two or three weeks so i we might put that on the main feed it might be good enough i think um that's a super interesting thing but other than that. I don't know, man. Just, I'll probably do something in Argentina when I get out there. Yeah, I might, I might go to Portugal for a bit in February. Okay. We'll see how that goes.

It's good golf out there. Yeah. Uh, I guess that's it, man. Yeah. What's today? That's it. December 19th. I mean, what are you put this out at the end of the year? Listeners, like you guys are right now at your job. It's December 18th, okay? 6 p.m. Like you guys are at your jobs this week, really giving it your all. Come on. You know? Like, no one's putting in any effort this week. I mean, look, if you made it 43 minutes of the way through, I don't care what you think of the show anyway. Yeah, we're done here.

Are we done here? I feel like we're done. Yeah, happy New Year. Thanks for listening, guys. Cheers. At least it's something, you know? Yeah. Some follow the noise.

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