The Underworld Podcast - Russian Mercenaries African Drug Empire, Israel’s Sushi Mob war & the murdered Assassin: Stash House

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

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 megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. that's i can't sleep with benjamin boster and welcome to the underworld podcast a show hosted by two journalists who have reported on this sort of stuff all over the world and now bring you a weekly show on international organized crime from here from there from the past from the present from the future whatever you

guys want to know i am danny gold i am joined as always by handsome englishman sean williams in buenos Osres. And yeah, this week you guys may have noticed there's no cold open. This is like our show we call Stash House that we do approximately every six to eight weeks when we've got run out of ideas or don't want to sit down and write a full episode. It's a special occasion where we want to run through the craziest international organized crime stories out there right now. Sean, what do you have to say for yourself? I'm just sorry generally about everything that I've done and do and will do. So apologies to everyone for that. But yeah, should we

jump into organized crime? There's people who've done those things than me. Real quick, Patreon.com, system, on world podcast for bonus episodes. Underworldpod.com for merch and all that. You can email us at the Underworldpodcast at Gmail.com. You can also sign up on Spotify or on iTunes. Okay.

First up, a place that is near and dear to my heart, the Central African Republic. I think I made my first big documentary there when the Civil War broke out in December of 2013 and still one of the craziest place. in situations I've ever been in. And I was with the legendary war photographer, Robert King, if you haven't seen the movie about his life,

I think you can get it on iTunes, watch it, and then imagine sharing a hotel room with him for two weeks during the outbreak of a civil war in one of the poorest countries on Earth. Heaven. In hell. Actually, I went back and watched a few of those videos from your trip.

And why? Goodos, man. That's great work. I was just thinking how uniquely mad that part of the world is. we just, I've just loved to do something again there soon. But for now, after Cuba, I'm going to spend like six to nine months just looking up stories about kite flyers and guys who made model railways in their homes. So no more of that for me.

Well, maybe you could do this story, but you probably would get killed doing it. Here's the Wall Street Journal with one of those headlines that like went straight into my veins and the Stash House folder. Quote, Wagner's remnants are running an opioid empire in the center of Africa. I mean, buddy. Like this is for me. Bullseye. Yeah. Bullseye, right?

Quick Wagner speed run. If you guys don't remember all the craziness with them the last few years or didn't listen to our full episode on them, which must have been a few years ago by now, right? A few. Yeah. They are a diabolical Russian mercenary outfit that basically functions as an apparatus of the Russian state, except it gives them plausible deniability, which is good because they do things like killing people with sledgehammers and filming it amongst others.

They're active in Ukraine, the Middle East. Africa, they do the whole massacre, rape, pillage, exploit natural resources sort of thing and they're pretty good at those things. Yevgeny Prozhen is the founder and leader. He's a Russian ex-Kahn who did about nine years

for robbery, got out in 1990, sold hot dogs, which I support selling hot dogs, but not everything else they does. He worked his way up to running the restaurant where Putin entertained visiting head to state, became Putin's chef, ran a troll farm, then owned the most famous private army on earth.

There's a little bit more in the career ladder there, but you guys can listen to the episode for the full rundown. Yeah, that's a great show. And truly, I mean, that is one of the greatest characters' arcs ever. I mean, just think, next time the way it serves you one of those little tiny biscuits with salmon on top at a party. That could be the next progoshin, the next mass murderer.

Look up his photo, if you guys don't know what he looks like. I mean, this guy looks the part. Progosion, though, is dead. because back in June of 2023, he mutinies, I think he was in the net, or he was either in the regions of Ukraine, Russia had taken or just outside them. Anyway, he marches on Moscow in like a convoy, stops, gets convinced to take a deal. And then two months later, I think to the day, his plane falls out of the sky, mysterious leaves, no leads, moving on.

I guess that's an upgrade from being pushed out of a, or falling out of a window. The Kremlin folds the Wagner. empire enter their Africa corpse under the defense ministry, a state basically kind of like, you know, embracing and nationalizing their brutal militia. That was basically the state anyway. So, yeah, that's what happens with Wagner. Now, the flagship Wagner op in Africa is in the central government republic. I don't know why it's called that by the journal. It might be because it was the first one there, but I know they've been super active in Libya and Mali and all that. So not really sure what they mean by that. I assume it's because they were the first off that was

in Africa. If you guys have watched the agency, which if you haven't, do it. I mean, I just binge the last two weeks. It's fantastic. That plot line in season two is based on Wagner, but it kind of sounds like it's based on the Wagner remnants, which we're going to talk about. I think they call it Valhalla in the show. Again, if you haven't watched it, watch it. There's a lot of like fake BS spy thrillers out there, especially with the CIA.

The agency is not like that. It's so incredibly good. I can't get over it. Did the agency come first and then you came across this or was it the other way around? They just came at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I started watching it, and then this story popped up, but I was aware of Wagner's operations in the Central Africa Republic. They're just, whoever the writers are just really on it when it comes to geopolitics and international affairs, because that's a good, good storyline. Now, Wagner arrives in CAR in 2018 under a security deal with the president of the country to provide security.

You know, there's been a decade plus civil war there, hundreds of thousands dead, more starving, one of the poorest countries in the world, one of the most anarchic. And that is before the war. Nobody really cares, so you probably don't know about it. Go watch my old vice news doc on it. I think it was just called the war in the Central African Republic. I was younger and had a lot more hope in my eyes, despite being in the middle of a civil war. In July of 2018, three Russian journalists

who'd flown down to make a documentary about Wagner are ambushed and killed on a road, I think outside the capital there. Officially it's a botched robbery. Independent investigators dispute that. Still unsolved. In 2021, there's a big rebel push against the president. Wagner fights alongside some UN peacekeepers, strangely enough, to beat it back.

By that October, five UN expert bodies are documenting Wagner's alleged summary executions, torture, disappearances, and rape. For that rescue, though, Wagner gets handed the country pretty much. The main industrial gold mine, a diamond operation, a timber concession of like 2,000 square kilometers, radio station, and consumer brands, which I love. I mean, they're brewing a beer there. And they've a spirit and alcohol called Wanaw, which I don't even know what a Central African moonshine tastes like. But I imagine it does make you go blind. Yes. So this story just comes out, per the journal, up to 500 Wagner holdovers,

meaning men who never really signed on to the whole, you know, new Wagner nationalized look in a lawless country where no one can do anything to them. They hold the fiefdom on the upper Ubangi River, beyond the. reach of local law enforcement or the paper says Moscow itself. And really, CAR is pretty lawless in general. There are still warlords and parts of it. I don't know if you guys remember Joseph Coney, right? He was hanging out there for a minute. So these former Wagner guys are essentially a warlord op. And the thing funding them is Tramadol, the synthetic opioid painkiller prescription drug. But apparently at high doses, they claim it can give something like, it can give the user energy and across West and Central Africa, they call it the poor man's cocaine. This is like echoes of

of the KMT in Myanmar, right? It's like the, what they call them, the lost boys back in the 50s or whatever, but is this stuff similar to Kush? I mean, we're going to talk about Kush a tiny bit more in this episode, but Kush is kind of like a synthetic thing as well, right?

But it's like a made-up, throwing together drug, right? Tramidol is a real thing that gets prescribed in the US. It's quite popular, you know? The pill thing in Burma is interesting because all the generics, I think, are made there. And I know these guys who did wild NGO stuff in Burma when I was there,

And they used to talk about the Burmese borderlands, which are lawless places. I mean, you've been to a few of them. But the borderlands specifically near India that are just overwhelmed with prescription pills made there. Yeah. Everyone cracked out popping pills, you know, like a SoundCloud rapper in 2018. It's supposed to be incredibly dark, dark, dark. I've heard stories that they're like- chained up in all sorts of like insane markets.

I don't know, dude, wild stuff. Yeah, I heard that there's like entire parts of the border there where it's just like pits full of blister packs and stuff like this like it just looks like a silvery lake or some shit it sounds mad man it sounds still placed on the world like that and two of them are the central

African republic and the Burmese borderlands but they're few and far between how it works with those pills are they are legally manufactured in India exported legally to firms the Democratic Republic of Congo were packaged in in Kinshasa the capital that is the capital right Kinshasa or

major city barged up to the river town of Zongo, which is, you know, gets to a CIR, CIR borders Congo, and then it's run across that river into the Central African Republic. Zongo, Zongo, Congo, that's where it's coming from. That is correct, Sean. Now, the customer base is the darkest part. You got miners and Wagner's gold mines taking it to work longer hours. A former Wagner associate told the general they supplied to the elite presidential guard

and to a pro-government youth militia called the Sharks who patrol Bengi, the capital, and they basically beat up opposition supporters. And commanders handed out before battle. Here's Natalia Dukon, a researcher with a global initiative against transnational organized crime. In battlefield context, tremidol is being taken in massive doses. And then fear vanishes and agitation surges as combatants enter a pharmacological trance. So you're saying that this might be a difficult one to report. Yes.

It's a difficult country to report. Right. And you're going to have to have a healthy amount of. of protection there. It'd be like going to Somalia. We're going to want like probably a convoy of 10 or 15 gunman. You pay $25 a day too. And you really just hope that they really want that $25 and not more for selling you to Wagner,

which is a thing that could potentially happen. So I am a little confused about this. I mean, these guys are basically a breakaway faction of Wagner, not officially Wagner, because I honestly wouldn't understand it if they were Wagner because Wagner makes a ton of money. I think they mine at least $180 million a year, not to mention the other stuff. And the journal quotes that, you know,

someone is saying, someone else saying Wagner's effectively captured the state because this doesn't seem like selling cheap generic drugs in an incredibly poor African country does not,

by my estimate, especially a country this small, seem like you can make that much money selling these pills, which I'm sure is super, super cheap. I mean,

even if you make them for 10 cents and you're selling, I don't know, millions for 20 cents profit, Is that that much money, Sean? What's the math on that? Still, it's penis, isn't it? I mean, how many people living in the CIA? Tens of millions. But either way, not that many. It's a small country. So I don't know how many

pills they're actually selling. I guess you could make some money. But for Wagner, maybe not. But for a Wagner breakaway faction, I guess it makes sense. Also, did not know treminal smuggling was a thing in that it was huge in Africa. The UN's drug office has more than 90% of all tremidels seized worldwide over a recent five-year stretch was seized in Africa, predominantly West Africa. Their regional director once put it this way. Tramadol is regularly found in the pockets of suspects arrested for terrorism in the Sahel.

600,000 pills headed for Boko Haram got seized. Three million turned up in Niger and boxes with UN logos on them. And in 2017, Italian police pulled 37 million trammal pills shipped from India off of both there, 75 million dollars worth, bound for Libya. An investigator said the Islamic State. So maybe there is money in there, and I'm just wrong. even more gnarly Wagner is apparently now entering Sudan, Darfur actually, into the completely ignored and brutal civil war there.

These are the joys of a multipolar world, Sean. Yeah, I do not want to meet some Jangerweed 12 year old off his face on Tramadol. That would not be much fun. But I mean, there's, you know, so much consumer choice, really great stuff. And I mean, if we're talking CAR, what are your views on that movie The Ambassador? Because I found it really interesting. Is that the one with a Dutch guy who pretends to be a diplomat? He gets like an honorary diplomat.

And he gets all the briborries and all that. You know, I never saw it. I do feel like there was some controversy about it. And I typically just don't trust documentary makers at this point in my career. Especially stuff like that can just be so finagled. Did he get killed or he got someone killed? He got killed. One of the guys was a friend.

French mercenary in the movie and he gets killed like a week after they film. Yeah. But they're all after these like diplomatic passes, right? Yeah, I think. Those guys were shady as hell anyway, so he could have got killed for different reasons. And maybe it was good. You know, this was what, 10 years ago. So I don't have a 12 years ago.

I don't have a good recollection of it. I do admire filmmakers who take those risks. But like, I'm just so skeptical of documentaries in general these days. Anyway, let's keep it going. Actually, no, more skeptical of podcasts, except for this one. Yeah, of course, yeah. We are the only one. My first story today comes from back home in the beautiful, perfect UK,

where a pretty crazy case has just wrapped up surrounding a teenage Norwegian hitman, Swedish Iran-back gangsters in a race against time to stop him killing its intended target in a northern English town. We've done a few episodes on this sort of stuff, right? The Iran-back gangsters in Europe. Scandinavian Hitman. I think we had what a two-parter on Swedish gang wars that covered this maybe last year. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say people should definitely be listening to those shows. But before we get into that topic, like, I mean, this one, it's really wild. Like, it's really, really crazy. And it begins in the all-rich Norwegian city of Stavanger, where Johannes Natland is born in 2006 to a comfortable

family, both parents, journalists, which is a massive red flag, promising young footballer too. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that's more of a red flag for parents is if they're both either child psychologist or crackheads. Yeah, I mean, similar to journalists, both of those things, but yeah, yeah, not good. But age 13, surprisingly, Natlin starts taking drugs and soon he's getting high quote pretty much every day, according to his own testimony, drops out of school, grows paranoid that his parents are trying to kill him, journalists or maybe, and winds up in a from there, Natlin spends some time in what he calls a home for problem children, where he meets another kid who recruits him to a group called the Fox Trot Network. And yes, if that rings

a bell, congratulations. You listen to this show at least almost as much as you should. Like Danny just mentioned, we did a two-part on Fox Trot back in December. And it is a gang set up by a shadowy dealer called Rawa Majid, aka the Kurdish Fox, at the center of a shocking wave of narco violence all over Sweden. Since the end of the 2010s, Fox Trot has emerged as the dominant drug gang in Sweden, of which there are, well, literally tons. There's the Bro Network, Darlene Network, Norseberg Network,

Tensetern Network, Husby Hyenas, slightly better, 24K and the Rumba Network, which I think that's another big one, right? The Rumba, if I remember that show correctly. Yeah, definitely check out Danny's two-part of there, gets deep into this stuff and the Kurdish fox's deadly rivalry with another gangster named Strawberry. By the 2020s, cops in Sweden estimate there are 200-ish gangs there and 62,000 people involved in some capacity. And that is in a country which has barely more than, well, just under

11 million people, which is pretty crazy. Bombs, blockades in the cities, assassination. Oh, and Fox Troy is allegedly backed by the array. regime and therefore sanctioned by U.S. and U.K. authorities. Yeah, I mean, they're not like originally backed, right? They're sort of hired by, while also kind of extorted by, because the leaders have fled there and need their protection. But I'm sure they're also having fun doing what they're doing. Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit complicated.

And it gets... By what they're doing, I meant like attacking synagogues and also killing Iranian dissidents across Europe. Yeah, all that great stuff. Yeah. It's been going on for some time all over the world. And the Fox Trot Network, so it gets big by, I guess, just like stepping up the county line system that the UK is so great at. And it pioneers the use of teenage hitmen across Scandinavia, especially something that Europol calls violence as a service,

which if you work in tech, you will get the reference the sort of things that terrible men with Gilles say a lot. Natland is going to become the latest in this disturbing new trend when the go. he meets in his halfway house who goes by the name Unknown Hustler on the messaging app. Signal recruits him into Fox Trot. So this is actually a story about Signal and not, as I assumed, EncroChat, which is where like 99% of all crime stories are coming out of in Europe. On March 15, 2025, Unknown Hustler then forwards Natland a message from a foxtrot leader, quote, killing in England, 270K, have transport ready out of the country, country will smuggle assassin out of the country. The police will be paid to look the other way.

Nothing can go wrong. Look, guys, we don't have a lot of wisdom to impart me and Sean. We've made a lot of poor decisions in our lives. You're not going to learn much from us in this show when it comes to good decisions. But a good rule of thumb, anytime someone asks you to do something highly illegal and says nothing can go wrong, that's when you turn down the job. Yes, correct. You go in a different direction. I think that's what you said to me six years ago as well, right, when we were talking about this.

What could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, and here we are having fun. 270,000 Norwegian Krona, by the way, that's around 28,000. Grand U.S., which, you know, not bad for a teenager. Natland is then added to a signal group called Assassin EU. Guys, come on, with two fox truck guys. Ginner Arlen, which means the general and agent 47.

And Natland asked them, who is to be killed? Very good, very classic English there, although maybe you've spoken to Norwegian. I don't know. Anyway, the general, just 17 years old. This guy is deep into the life, tied to a spate of arson attacks and two murders in Norway, one of which killed the wrong guy, but he still calls it a success. The general gets arrested for these murders in Norway, and at trial, he says that his mentor in Foxtrot is Agent 47, which I guess is like a hitman reference.

Wasn't he something like that? I don't know. Anyway, cops believe Agent 47 is actually Ali Shabab Ahmed, a vet at the ripe old age of 22, who was arrested in the Iraqi city of Soleimania last December is a waiting expedition and is supposedly very close to the Kurdish fox. I don't know much about Iraq, you do. Soleimani is like a Kurdish Shia city, is it? It's like different to the rest of the country.

I don't know. Kurdish. It's Kurdish. It's Kurdish. No, the Kurdish are overwhelmingly Sunni, but it's close to the border with Iran, so there's a lot of Iranian influence there. Oh, okay.

Okay. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, given what we just said. You've got weight loss goals, and this summer it's time to actually hit them. Weight loss by Hymns is designed to support you every step of the way, and now Hymns offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pan, so you can lose the weight and keep it off. With Wagoe at Hems, lose up to 20% of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise,

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will go be clinical study information and restrictions. Visit hymns.com. Yeah, again, dig into Danny's two-parter for more on that bit of the story and the Kurdish and Iranian connection to all of this because, yeah, it's obviously crazy. Anyway, on March 16 last year, so the day after his first contact with the assassin EU group. Also, Norway's not in the EU, guys. Like, saw it out. Agent 47, books Johannes Natlund, a one-way ticket from Stavanger to Manchester.

Actually, neither is Sweden. What are these people talking about? Why the one-way ticket? I don't get it. I guess they told this guy they were going to get him out and that nothing could go wrong. so he trusts them. But the following day he flies. Customs officers in the UK in Manchester

then detain and question him because of the one-way thing. He's also travelling on an emergency passport because his one was expired and he has barely any cash or a hotel booking. The agents then refuse Natland official entry, but he gets in anyway because the next flight back to Stavanger isn't for three days. That is like, saw it out, guys.

Anyway, the hit is on. Agent 47 and a fox trot logistics guy with the username 1. By the way, that's a better name. Like, don't call yourself the general one being assassin to you. Just use numbers. This guy, one and Agent 47, they tell Natlin to get a taxi 30 miles from Manchester to the town of Huddersfield, where he's sent to a pile of cash hidden under some trash near the entrance to a footpath tunnel, which I've tried to find for years, and all I found were piles of...

pornography. Natlin then checks into a three-star hotel on the edge of town, paying in cash, obviously, and he takes another taxi to some woodland where one, the logistics guy, has left him as semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, and some ammo. When he gets back to the hotel room, Natlin can't resist then sending his powers photos of him on the hotel bed with the guns and the money. What do we tell you? Yeah, I mean, I get it like it's fun to floss, but not fun to go to prison or get murdered cause up your IG photos. No, you're going to be flossing for many more years, son. It's quite funny, actually.

So this is like just his down payment. It's not a lot of money. So he's just kind of carefully placed sort of 25 to 30, 10 and 20 pound notes on the sheets. It looks like, it kind of looks like an art project. It's only a few hundred quid kids. Anyway, Agent 47 then Pings Natlin's Signal app. We have much to do tomorrow, he writes. Yeah, I mean, you're supposed to kill someone.

But Norwegian cops have just arrested the general at Oslo's International Airport, and on his phone, they discover messages detailing a hit in the UK. I mean, they've probably just looked at a assassin EU. And then they reach out to British police. And because of Foxtrots Iran links, counter-terror cops get involved. And now it is a race against time to stop whatever's about to happen from happening. I guess because of his running with customs, Natland is top of the cops' list. of 5.15 a.m. the next morning they burst into his room and arrest him.

That's where I was thinking, oh, this would make a great magazine profile, except that's the bit that's a bit boring. They just find him immediately. Here's the BBC, which wrote a great piece on all this quote. As he came out of his room, he saw the green aiming dots from the firearms officers' guns on his chest, and he mimed shooting at one of them, though his guns were still under the bed. He was quickly restrained and handcuffed. Natlin then pleads guilty to the firearms of ammunition possession, charges, because, yeah, why not? But not guilty of criminal conspiracy. He tells jurors he's actually

planned to shoot himself in the foot, adding that he had found himself in a major pickle, which, you know, nice try at turning a British jury. But, yeah, I mean, the old, I was going to shoot myself in the foot with two guns and 19 bullets. It's, I don't know if it's been tried before. It doesn't work now. After a retrial at London's old Bailey, the jury finds him guilty of the whole lot, bringing it into a pretty amazing organized crime story. Natland will be sent in October, but the Fox Trot Network is still going very strong in Sweden and far beyond. And yeah, we should definitely get back to it at some point. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole situation there is just crazy. I can't believe it's still going strong and this is still happening

when this has been such an issue for so long and they just can't do anything about it. Like, it's insane. Yeah, Sweden. Yeah. Next up, we're going to where I should be at right now in August, but sadly, I'm not because you guys just don't support our sponsors or Patreon enough. I am talking about Monaco, and I'm sure the story has popped up on a lot of your Raiders. Yeah, I know, you know what, I'll tell you a little story about me and Monaco from years back. Let's build up that law. People love the law, don't they? You're going to have to drop some, you should have dropped some law next week, actually.

I just dropped more about being in an African-Central Civil War with like a notoriously, not notorious, I'm sorry, a legendary war photographer sharing a hotel room for two weeks. A guy who they literally made a movie about his life, and I'm in, anyway. Oh, wait, are you going to tell the story now later on? How did you feel? How did you feel? That's what we need to know. Had a great time. It's a little frustrating, you know.

But anyway, are you telling the story now or should I keep going? No, no, no. Let's get on with this and then I'll tell it down the bomb. All right. So on June 29th, just before 9 p.m., a bomb goes off at the entrance of an apartment building called the Sun Palace. And the three people it takes down are Ukrainian-born property tycoon, Vadim, Yer Maliev, who's 58, his longtime partner and their 13-year-old son. I think they all live, right? One of them's in critical condition, no, but I think they're all alive.

Oh, really? I probably should have checked that before writing the episode. Anyway, it's nasty work. It's a remote detonated device packed with bolts and buckshot left on the front steps of a residential building. In one country in Europe where the entire national product is basically like nothing bad ever happens to rich people there. Monaco's Minister of State told French television it was, quote, the first time in history to my knowledge that such an act has taken place in the principalities. So who is Yermalayaev? He's born in the east of the country, May, 1968, in Denebro.

Back then, Denepro Petrovsk. Petrovsk? De Nispo Petrovsk. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, whatever, bro. Don't want you showing off. The closed Soviet rocket city that in the 90s turned into a laboratory of gangster capitalism. He starts his climb in Transbo, hauling cigarettes, booze, washing powder, and shampoo in from Bulgarian Turkey.

And in 1995, founds what becomes the Olive Corporation. And Olive gets big. He builds Mo City, build as the biggest shopping center in Ukraine when it's opened in 2006. And he builds the tallest residential building in the country. He launches a vodka brand brandies, three wineries in Crimea. He sells a bank to the checks, sells a quarter of a cleaning products company to Procter and Gamble. And Forbes, Ukraine, puts him at $220 million, which is not exactly in St. oligarch territory when it comes down to it, right?

This is not a Bromovich or Koterovsky, but the guy he does well for himself. He's maybe like a third-tier oligarch, you know, like maybe he's not buying an NBA team. He could buy a W, he's probably by like 10 WMBA teams or like an MLS team, you know? Yeah, or a championship team like Chow and Athletic. I'm just going to get the, going to get the name in there. Should ask him to. By the late 2010s, he's traded his Ukrainian citizenship for a Cypriot passport, and by 2022, he's in Monaco. In December of 2020,

Zelensky's government hits him with 10 years of sanctions over allegations. His Crimean wine business kept running under Russian law after the annexation through proxies. He, for the record,

denies it. Then his son, Artour gets picked up in Cyprus and handed to Estonia where prosecutors charged him with establishing and leading a criminal organization running scam call centers,

which is a thing in eastern Ukraine and the area of Russia nearby. I think, do you guys remember, I think our last staff shots We talked about that son of a gangster who was murdered in Bali in a really brutal way. And the accusation there was that the father was running scam centers as well in a similar region. So look, we've got some shadiness there for sure.

But honestly, it's not like beyond the pale, I guess you could say. I mean, it's shady, but it's not like the most egregious. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not in terms of oligarchs and gang. Worst things have happened in eastern Ukraine and western Russia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And among the oligarchs, right? These guys have fought wars that kill literally thousands of people over, you know, industrial steel mills and stuff like that. So this is like, you know, you know, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. So now the assassin is a pro, sort of. It's a woman. She disguises herself as a man. She ends up being a 39-year-old Ukrainian woman. And actually, like I said, sort of a pro. She ends up letting her snake tattoo on a row. right arm be seen by CCTV. So she does the bombing.

She escapes. She walks over the border of France, picks up a German-plated rental, drives through Italy into Germany, and on July 1st, she crosses into Ukraine. That same day, she gets to a black BMW and has never seen alive again. Her body turns up in woods near her village outside of Q.

Damn. Nine millimeter casings on the ground, shot at least twice in the back of the head. So that's right. The assassin assassinated after she did the job. You know, that's got to be like the number one workplace safety issue for assassins, right?

Yeah, I mean, there's bad lumber support on those little Heidi holes they shoot from. Probably plenty of yoga to get over there. But this is dark night stuff. Is it dark night where they kill the, I don't know, whatever, yeah. It's a ton of movies, right? But this is like, you know,

international assassin, rich southern European, I don't even know, Monaco's a country, I guess, yeah, city state, gets killed by people hired by her after killing an oligarch. Like, this is some wild intrigue, brother. Is it criminal mafia stuff?

Is it an oligarch battle? security states by stuff. I mean, the next season of the agency is writing itself right now. Now, it gets crazier because Ukraine catches these two guys and the prosecutors charged them with killing her. One was dismissed from the SBU earlier this year, which is similar to the FBI, and another is a serving officer of H-Ur, Ukraine's military intelligence. Investigators say both had been sending her money, bank transfers, and crypto.

And then the newspaper, Ukraine's Kaprovda, reports the two didn't just clean up afterward. They're seen as the organizers of the Monaco job itself. The original task was a kidnapping before it became a bombing, and what admits building the bomb's initiation node disguised as a child's torque toy car. On July 17th, the prosecutor general releases blast footage of the suspects that they had allegedly deleted from a camera. They'd set up themselves, apparently to prove to whoever hire them that the job was done. So they were middlemen, it sounds like. Okay, so wild stuff.

But as of me writing, nobody has been charged ordering the hit just yet. And the question is who wanted him hit. Theory 1 from police sources cited by Ukraine's Propska. Revenge out of a scam call center world. Theory 2 comes from the man himself who accuses H.R. Ukrainian military intelligence. But I think he later walks back the accusation. Remember a few months ago, like I said, we had that Ukrainian mobster kid being killed and all that,

scam call centers. There's a lot going on there. Anyway, going to be interesting to see how this shapes out, but it is a crazy story. Yeah, that's nuts. I guess you forget that other stuff is happening in Ukraine. as well. Like, you just think that there is one story, but there are many and they're all not nice. And Russia. And Russia. Yeah, stuff happens in Russia. It's quite big. But I guess I tell my little Monaco story now.

It's like, it's a bit serious. I don't know, whatever. It was actually in Monaco where I realized I had to do proper journalism because I was living in Dubai, post-financial crash. I edited this trade magazine about broadcast equipment, right? And I mean like cables and antennas and shit. And I got a business class trip to Monaco, which is really nice. And I spent the first night in Monte Carlo Casino, which is also quite good. And then the second night, I had to spend all day at an expo for satellite companies. And in the evening, did a press dinner with all these 50 and 60-year-old guys in bad suits, talking about models of antennas, just getting like more and more drunk to make the conversation to go away. And it was exactly the same time as the Arab Spring.

All that was on the television as these guys were like hobnobbing. So I decided right there I was going to get out. do some proper work. So I booked a little holiday time, flew to Cairo, and that is where I got the taste for doing hard journalism. So there you go. A huge thanks to all the boring, bad-suited men of Monaco for my mediocre career. Great, great story. Really good over a fire and a glass of Ukrainian brandy, eh? Luckily, I have a great story for us with a headline I cannot ignore of a mob war in Israel with grenades, the mob and Japanese food, says the channel I-24. And that's because it involves

attacks on Israel's biggest fast casual sushi chain, Joponica. 44 branches. Pretty big. Now, we've done a few episodes on Israeli organized crime. We had former crime reporter Ben Hartman joined us on both, I think. One was on the Jewish-Israeli groups, the Alperones,

Zav Rosenstein, the wolf, the Abrajiels. And we later did another one on the Arab crime clans. Yeah, the car bombs, right? I'm going to say, oh, God, that was really early. That one. The car bomb wars of the Israel mafia was the title and it was a good episode because there are some characters. We haven't done anything on the Bedouin trafficking networks though, which would be super

interesting, but I feel like they do not Instagram of their crimes. They keep it pretty close to the chest. And if you look into it, you disappear in the desert and are never seen again. So they're keeping it tight. Now, contrary to what you might think, the Jewish-Israeli and the Arab-Israeli crime clans don't really clash, right? In fact, they work together a lot. And as we always say, organized crime is a uniter.

Sometimes I think the Arab clans get hired. They team up with one of the other families against another. They also tend not to cross each other in business, right? Different areas under different control, different rackets. The Israelis do function more internationally. They were big, big in ecstasy trafficking and underground casinos. When the Arab crime families, they're bigger on localized stuff, right? Protection rackets, stealing cars, smuggling.

Though the Israeli crime families do their share of protection rackets. the old school stuff like garbage and some union stuff too. I think, not union stuff, but I don't know, some protection stuff as well. Which is why this one is interesting, because here you have an Arab crime fam,

the Jerushis clashing with the Jewish one, the Mosle's. Though as we are learning, it might not be that simple. And the numbers are absurd, right? In about a week in July, something like 15 grenade and explosive incidents and the target getting hit over and over again

was this fast casual Japanese sushi restaurant. In one overnight stretch, seven fragonades went off across six cities, and not only at restaurants, several hit residential buildings, and there was gunfire at a branch in Herzlilla, an attempted arson and Haifa. The chain's own owner says nine of his branches came under attack. And what's crazy about this is that the owner of Joponika was apparently once linked to the Mosleys, one of the families, and is now linked to associates of the Jerushis. Also, the owner is the owner of Betar Jerusalem, the soccer team, and if you know anything about that, it's interesting he's linked to an. Arab crime family. So fun stuff going on. Yeah, I think that is the club where they

protested an African guy called Muhammad being signed for the team, even though he's like a Christian from Gambia. They're like the wildest hooligan crew, I think. Yeah, they're insane. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think can they compare to like the

you know, the sort of Belgrade when you have like the Serbian team versus? I don't think it compares to like that. But like, no, no, no. No, no. They're really tough European friends. But they're also kind of, I mean, they're nuts. Yeah. I mean, I did the story years ago about Betar Nordia, which was like a splinter club because

it got like really full on with Betar. I never managed to get that commissioned, even though I saw a game and I hung out with the fans. But yeah, they're an interesting club. I think they're still around as well, so check them out. So more on our contenders in this war. In one corner, you've got the Jerusalem, a city in the center of Israel. 75% Jewish city, 25% Muslim. It also has a high crime rate, and the Jerushia, according to police, one of the most powerful and violent crime families in the country.

Now, it's a clan of about 2,500 people. Not all of them you'll see are involved in organized crime, obviously. They're descended from Libyan Muslims who settled in the region around 150 years ago, and the origin story is pretty unbelievable, right? Way back in the day during the British mandate, and I think even before, during the Ottoman times, Jews in the Ramalod area paid the Jerusalem. for armed protection against attacks and banditry. So the family's actually been in the protection business since like, I think arguably the 18, like the late 1800s. And that, Sean, is what we call brand consistency.

The criminal wing is only made up about 120 foot soldiers. And they do, you know, extortion, gambling, cocaine, weapons, construction, dispute, arbitration, loan sharking. And at one point allegedly counterfeiting 10 shekel coins. And a good chunk of them, like I said, they're not involved in a serious crime, right? their doctors, their lawyers, very successful. In the other corner you have the mostly organization, which is out of southern Tel Aviv, and they are Jews who came over mostly from Iraq and Syria, I believe,

which is interesting because a lot of the criminal clans, I think are most, a lot of Moroccan, but Moroccans have a huge percentage of Moroccan Jews are a huge percentage of Israelis and some Russian in the last 30 or 40 years. But, so this is, they're a bit of an outlier. They got their start running vegetable stalls and green grocers in South Tel Aviv, which is a rough area, then got involved in illegal gambling operations, got major expanded into extortion, loan-jarking, casinos abroad in South Africa and Romania, and starts with the father, and now the three sons run it, Shy, Yosi, and Ellie. So they're definitely transnational, like they're big.

Apparently, they first worked under the notorious Abrazil family. I think, you know, at this point, they're probably the most notorious. And once most powerful crime family in Israel, I say once most powerful crime family in Israel, I say, one's most powerful because they got cracked down on hard. The boss, It'saq, he got extradited to do 10 years in the U.S. I think he served his time there, then got sent back to Israel, where he got sentenced to three life sentences in the summer of 2022. But back in 2011, when Yatop Abregio first gets extradited to the U.S.,

the Moseley's went after their rackets, the Abrageal family's rackets when they were weakened, and this led to a bloody war that went international. Between 2013 and 2015, the Moseley-Aborzio conflict sparked into South Africa, bodies dropped around Johannesburg and Third Brother Shy was arrested there in South Africa in 2015. He fought extradition on a string of killings and conspiracies. Did this come into the original show?

I feel like this is a full episode right here. We talked about the Abrageals a lot because they're like I said, and they've got a fascinating story and they were active in the US. But I don't think we went into details in this war. But there might be something there. We can look into it.

So the origin story of this new war that's breaking out is there's An organized crime figure who had been out of the country for about two years and was arranging his return to Israel. As part of the deal surrounding his return, we don't know why. I mean, this whole thing sounds funny. Something like 30 million U.S. was supposed to change hands. I think it was in crypto. The details are hazy.

Members of the Jerusalem were somehow involved and they thought the number was only around 4 million. And when they realized the real figure and saw that they just got two million out of it, they had reached out to the Mosley's. There was a furious phone call. And they basically told them, like, be thankful they got anything. Yinet citing police said the Moseley family handed control of an illegal betting operation to another figure and that's what enraged the Jerusalem side so it's a different story who thought they deserved it.

So different stories but it's just you know, it's just business maybe. What's also interesting is that though he hasn't been accused of orchestrating it, an Israeli crime boss named Iran Haya who is currently locked up in Brooklyn and has been for the last two years just had his sell rated because he's suspected to be involved in the conflict.

Him and the Muzli's used to work together, most of these used to work together, they'd have falling out. And then they tried to kill each other a few times. There was a car bomb, something in Malaysia, I think. So he hates the most of these. He's being investigated for involvement somehow, but we don't know what. And I'm speculating here, but he might be teaming up with the Jerushis on a situation or hiring them to take out the most of these, but it sounds like the Jeruys have good

reasoning too to want to fight them. But yeah, they are going after each other hardcore. And when these guys go after each other, they really go after each other. An underworld source told Channel 12, quote, It's enough to say good morning to a criminal who's in dispute with the other side. Or you showed up at a wedding, a bar mitzv, even at coffee with them. As far as they're concerned, you're marked. That's what happened to Abramov.

And Abramov is Barak, Abramov, who owns Japanica, the sushi restaurants. Police arrested Yossi Musli at his home on July 14th. He testified in court that they warned him beforehand that his name was coming up, that he had three or four days to calm the situation down or they'd move aggressively on it. His detention has just got extended by five days. Then on the 19th, police themselves asked for house arrest and a judge sent him home for the rest of the week. As of right now, nobody has been indicted for any of these attacks. I mean, this is like, I really want to know more about this.

I mean, I suppose Israel would be a decent consumer market for ecstasy. I'm pretty sure I've taken ecstasy there before years ago. But given where it is, like on the sea, like, is it an end point for drug routes going through Syria, Lebanon? I guess it's a bit harder now, but like Central Asia and the like. I mean, I'd love to know more about this Bedouin routes. So the Exorcist thing was more popular in the 90s, and that's because they had good connections in Amsterdam, and that's when actually was big in the U.S.,

so they were trafficked all over. It was a global thing. Yeah, they consume Xxia there, but I don't think it's like an insane amounts, and I don't think the market is gigantic. It's not more big, right? No, no, no, no. But it's also not really an endpoint.

I mean, you had, like, they obviously drugs are smuggled there, their own networks, And you had, like, especially in the 80s and 90s, you had hash coming in from Lebanon, being smuggled. You had the Bedouin trafficking networks that were involved with it. Same thing with stuff coming up from Egypt. So there's definitely, I think, hash and stuff like that. And some drugs get in that way.

But Lebanon has its own, like, you know, drug consumption culture and all major, major networks. Syria has its own thing going on, obviously, with Capitagon and then other stuff going on and into Iraq. If there's meth there and stuff like that. But I think it's not too much of an endpoint. I think they have their own, their own smuggled. But they do work together, right? You have stuff getting smuggling from Egypt. You have stuff getting smuggled down from Lebanon.

I think it's mostly hash or weed, but I'm not, I'm not 100% sure on that. That's super interesting. I want to know more about this. Anyway, back to Africa for my second one today, specifically Liberia, where cops have made their biggest cocaine bust ever near the capital city of Monrovia. Actually, I really like Monrovia. I mean, I was there twice to cover Ebola, so it wasn't the best days there, but it's a cool town, man. And being in an African country where most people speak English, it's just a, well, the form of English.

It's just fantastic. Yeah. I mean, the history of it is pretty incredible, right? And that's what I guess that's what's called Monrovia. But, yes, we're going to hear from a guy with a sort of almost hilariously Western name in a minute. But cops have released videos showing dozens of suitcases and boxes inside a lorry. They say contained high-grade gregard. gear with a street value of over $300 million.

Funnily enough, the initial claim was $370 million, but that was soon downgraded for some reason. I'm sure we will never find out. Several people were arrested in the initial raid in a town called Duazon, which is about 12 miles outside the capital. That included one Serbian national and one Spanish-Columbian, just your regular guys hanging out in a small provincial town in Liberia. since then authorities arrested a number of local police officers including the highway patrol chief,

the head of major crimes, and a deputy commander at Monrovis International Airport. Someone was saying the other day that the Balkan gangs have really moved into West Africa, like Albanians and Serbs, maybe usurping the Lebanese middlemen there. Though I don't typically think of Liberia as like a major transshipment point, you know, definitely other countries in West Africa. Also, it's crazy how much the Albanians are taken over. like, you know, retail sales in London and Europe into becoming the major importers to major trafficking there and now moving further down the chain. Because I think they're also in Latin America as well.

Oh, yeah. You get reports from cops in like Columbia and Bolivia saying that they increasingly pick up like Albanian conversations on like open lines and stuff when they get a chance, which is nuts. We should do, we keep saying we're going to do an Albanian show. We've got to do one. People are the Albanians. They do. They do. As do we, if any of them are listening. As do we. As do we.

Especially the ones in the Bronx and Yonkers. Never said a bad one about them. I love those guys in Buenos Aires as well. They're really nice guys. Anyway, this raid, remember Liberia? This raid has been follow up via social media posts by Liberian cops. Filmed dancing in front of a pile of product worth around 19 million that was seized early June at that airport,

which had been falsely declared as cubes of Magi, Maggie seasoning. I mean, don't make TikTok dances about transporting coke, and don't make TikTok dancers if you're an officer about capturing coke. It goes both ways, you know? It does. Yeah, yeah. It's, I don't know, man. It's not a good look given what we just learned.

Anyway, quote, this was a serious transnational cocaine trafficking operation using Liberia's aviation and logistics system as a channel for organized crime, said Inspector General of Liberia, Gregory Coleman. But here's the Guardian for more, quote, news of the drug bus calls uproar in Liberia

and prompted President Joseph Boakai to order a combined investigation by the police and national anti-drug agency. Liberia will not be used as a safe haven, transit point warehouse, financial center, or operational base by criminal networks engaged in narcotics trafficking, he said at the time.

I think it's used as all of those things quite a lot. Anyway, continues, quote, but the delay in naming the suspects caused the row in parliament where Coleman was summoned to a special Senate hearing and fed public speculation that the investigation was being tampered with to protect powerful Liberian citizens. Coleman has since arrested the head of the logistics firm involved. Another subject had been in China when the airport bust happened. He obviously hasn't come back to Liberia. and Coleman released the Dutch number of another suspect plus his UK home address in the city of Birmingham,

which is a vibe. Then just a month later, comes this 300 million bust. Huge. And busts like this have been happening for years now as West Africa becomes one of the world's key transshipment points for South American powder. We've done recent shows on Dutch kingpin, Jost Lydikas in Sierra Leone, which neighbours Liberia to the south, where he's wound himself so called himself so close. closely into the political scene that he's married to the president's daughter. Check that episode. It wasn't that long ago. It's mad stuff. And Guinea-Bissal, which also neighbors Liberia,

but to the north has pretty much been a narco state going back like two decades. One of our early shows that's super interesting. According to the global initiative, a minimum 30% of the cocaine headed for Europe passes through West Africa, so much that the region has even developed its own addiction. I mean, Coke bought in some of the poorest countries on earth. That is when you know the price has truly gone down. Plus, kids all over West Africa are still getting hooked on Cush, which is a cheap and highly addictive synthetic street drug that we kind of nodded to earlier up in the show. I'm actually working on an upcoming show from my trip to Cuba, which is still giving me nightmares, which is getting flooded by a very similar, pretty gross synthetic

drug during the U.S. blockade. Here is LeMond writing last week about West Africa, though. Synthetic drugs were long confined to Western countries. Globalization has now brought them to new territories spreading quietly, but at alarming speed. Complex supply chains, linking cartels, intermediaries and street dealers have created a market with unprecedented profitability. God, that's bad in the London accent.

Cush first appeared in Sierra Leone in the mid-2020s and quickly spread to neighboring Liberia. In just a few years, the drug, which can be smoked or inhaled, is believed to have already caused tens of thousands of death, leaving behind traumatized cities. Is that true, though? Like, I feel like synthetics have always been all over. I mean, I don't know. I can't deep dive on it right now. But in my head, that sounds like made up. Okay.

No, I don't know. I'm asking me. Like, it sounds like, I don't, is it anything new? I feel, I mean, I'm new to this whole synthetic thing. So I don't know much about this stuff. I thought they're all smoking sort of dead people's bones. That was the story a while back, wasn't it? Yeah.

But, yeah, maybe that. The whole made-up Jencom thing? Yeah, yeah, that. I don't know. Email us or send us loads of messages on social media. We love that. Anyway, this article LeMond goes on quote, it all begins at the pause.

Yeah, no shit. In both Freetown and Monvovia, shipments of chemical components arrive, mainly from China, Southeast Asia and Europe, and particular the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. While there are ready to use batches of Kush, most of it is produced locally in clandestine labs scattered throughout both countries. The ingredients are transformed into a cheap and extremely potent drug.

I mean, the fun never ends in West Africa. Coke Kim-pins, cannabinoid crises. Let's do a Kush show soon if folks have the stomach for it because clearly I don't know anything about it. And yeah, it'd be fun to go back to that part of the world. I thought Cushman weed. I thought Cush meant weed too. It's one of those.

Yeah. Yeah. Kids. All right. Lastly, we have some quick updates on friends of the shows. First, Kaz Hamad, a notorious Iraqi Australian gang boss who fought the Melbourne Tobacco Wars. We did a show about him a few months ago.

He had just been arrested in Iraq. Apparently, he just got a life sentence there. Just as his 20-year-old middle manager of his firebombing operation got arrested in Australia. If you're new to the show, we did a big episode on him not three months ago, so I won't go over everything, but he's born in Iraq in 1984, comes to Australia in 1998 as a kid, eventually gets into heroin trafficking, goes to prison, gets deported back to Iraq in 2023, but he's already in the midst of a takeover of Melbourne's black market tobacco and cigarette market, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars because Australia has insane taxes on tobacco and cigarettes, which jacked the prices up supermarkets. high so people smuggle tobacco avoid the taxes and make a killing selling SIGs well under the market rate. Got it? Got it. Got it. Yeah, I've got it. Okay. Got it. You guys know. Yeah. In January. That could be a new tax. That could be a new catchphrase. Got it.

Simpler sticking on T-shirt. Anyway, in January, Iraqi forces arrest Hamad in Baghdad, because he's not just doing Sigs. He's trafficking drugs as well. So he disappears into Iraqi custody for a while that on July 28th, Baghdad's criminal court sentences him to life for trafficking drugs into Iraq and Australia and orders his assets confiscated. If you remember from the episode, he was fond of bragging about how untouchable he is, even on podcasts. Iraq's judicial cooperation center called him one of the most wanted individuals by, quote, Iraqi and international judiciaries, tying his network to drug trafficking, money laundering, murder, kidnapping, extortion, and organized violence. Worth noting, drug,

trafficking in Iraq can carry death. He got life. That's the other thing about being an organized criminal in a country like Iraq. I think he does have family connections to like higher ups there, but like if your family connection hireups piss off the wrong person who's

also a high up official, they can come down on you. So that, again, I have no idea if that's what happened, but it could have happened. Okay, even while in Iraqi prison, his crime group has kept it going and in April, the Australian police launched in operation to target Kaz's boys.

Still, fire bombings have continued and a 23-year-old successor of Takasa Mott has apparently taken charge. Deep breath, right? Was that too fast? Was I going too fast, folks? No, you're good, man. You good. We love you. So another friend of the pod and in prison gangster

just got into some more trouble for ordering crimes from a prison cell, like Kaz, where he has been for a decade-plus and actually built his empire from. Are we all our friends now just organized criminals? I just think it's funny to say A friend of the pod for like someone awful

instead of being like previous podcast subject you know, it's funny. It's a good bit, you know? Okay, so this one goes way back for us. We covered Indian gangster Lawrence Bichneux. He was charged in the U.S. just now with a RICO charge. On July 7th, the Justice Department unsealed three indictments out of Los Angeles charging 37 people across what prosecutors

describe as India-based transnational crime scene. syndicates. 17 new arrest plus seven defendants already locked up across California, Indiana, Georgia, Canada, and Spain run jointly with the Canadian RCMP, and the name at the top of the list is Lawrence Bichnu. Extortion, cocaine and meth trafficking, and ordering the June 2023 assassination of Sikh separatist Harddeep Singh Nizjar in Canada. All of it from a prison cell in India where he's been since 2014, he's 33 and he's been inside

since he was 21. It's called being a go-getter, Sean. What is your excuse? You think this guy's sitting around comparing, like complaining about boomers or how life isn't fair? He's not, you whiny nerds. He's out there making shit happen from prison. What is your excuse?

How long you got? No, I was looking back at the show that we did on him. 22, man. So you think he's hustling. We're hustling, man. We are hustling. Bishnu, if you might recall from the early episodes, said to have been behind the murder of Indian-Canadian gangster rapper Muzwala,

who we did a full app on. And Sean, if I'm not mistaken, he was also behind killing Indian activists in Canada. Yeah, I think we led with the story of Nijah. He just mentioned how the Indian state is using mobsters to kill Sikh separatists. Whole diplomatic thing, bodies drop in. Yeah, fascinating stuff. I think a couple years ago we did that one.

Yeah, and he's fully international. They've got operations in Europe, Canada, the U.S., India. I think we also talked quite a bit about one of Beechnew's top dogs, Goldie Brar, who confessed to the Muzwala hit on Facebook and later told the BBC the same thing, saying, quote, in his arrogance, he made some mistakes that could not be forgiven. We had no option but to kill him. I think we actually talked about that on a stash house, and it's kind of ironic to talk about the arrogance of making mistakes when you're confessing to murder of a very prominent person.

It's kind of like, you know, it's a little, you got some hubris yourself. Hubris, hubris, hubris yourself there, buddy. Hubris, yeah, I don't know why I said hubris. I know how to pronounce that word. But yeah, Indian gangsters, zero F's given. The DOJ's release says the enterprise routinely targeted prominent religious, social, and political leaders with violence, and quote, use these high-profile acts to terrorize and extort members of the community

and use violence to cultivate a climate of fear, in particular in India, among Indian diaspora communities worldwide. which is kind of interesting because I feel like they're already a pretty established diaspora and usually when diaspora communities are being extorted they're like poor and just coming up. You know, it's part of like a recent, it's a recent immigration thing, always going back hundreds of years.

So that means extortion of Punjabi diaspora, business owners in Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks, one demand running to $5 million and more extortion around Stockton and out in Ohio. A separate crew charged in the third indictment allegedly trucked hundreds of kilos of cocaine and meth from Greater L.A. to the Canadian border every week. And my favorite detail of this is that 520 kilos of coke was stolen from rival traffickers

around Los Angeles over about 60 months. So that means that Indian gangsters were robbing gang members in Los Angeles, which I said, like, these guys don't mess around. And it's always nice to see stereotypes combated through heavy amounts of organized crime and violence. It is. Yes, we love that. I guess lastly, we should mention the Victor Boot News.

which is, of course, that Boot, the merchant of death, infamous Russian arms trafficker, went on Tucker Carlson's terrible podcast to talk to Carlson about how much they both hate America or who knows what else. And by, you know, I'm not listening to that and I hate talking about it because I don't want to give them attention. And by attention, I mean, giving them attention, I mean Tucker. Like, I don't mind giving Boot attention, but giving Tucker attention. You know, you've got one of the worst people on Earth, a man who earns his living by destroying society pretty much, just toxic all around.

And then you've got Victor Boot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called, there we go. It's called misdirection, Sean. So basically they're hobnobbing on his podcast, no doubt giving the worst takes to anyone and podcast the stand has ever given. Truly the bottom of the barrel, which is saying a lot for Tucker. And with that, on to the next, I've got this three-parter coming out that I think is

going to be big, absolutely insane, some actual original reporting. I don't think anyone has told this story in full yet, but basically, it's below, meets the wolf of Wall Street, kind of meet Superchar. troopers. So get excited for that. Yes.