The Underworld Podcast - STASH HOUSE: Captagon Craziness, Free Narcos, Russian Crypto Scams, and More!

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

In this holiday special, we get into some of the big stories of the month from Captagon updates, the Gulf Cartel leader and Zetas creator going free, a wild Russian crypto London drug dealing scam, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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monopoly is a trademark of hasbro has not a sponsor of this promotion welcome back to the underworld podcast the weekly show about organized crime all over the world and throughout history. Brought to you by two dashing relatively young journalists, myself Danny Gold, and Englishman, Sean Williams. We've spent the last decade and a half traveling all over the globe reporting on stories like this, and now our only aim is to entertain you, our listeners, with cautionary tales from cautionary tales. Sean, what's anything interesting to say? We should keep this relatively short. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm off in a few days, which is quite interesting, right? I'm doing my Melbourne to Seoul to Zagreb trip.

So I'm looking forward to that. It's been really hard to meet people in these countries, but I'm going to make it happen because I'm a content king. And that's all I do. It's just creating content. So, yeah, that's what's going on here. It's miserable. It's Christmas coming up. I think we're putting this out on Christmas Eve, right?

Right. This is a special holiday episode. We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a second. As always, bonus episodes on patreon.com. Or you can sign up with one click on Spotify or on iTunes, underwoldpod.com for merch. And email us at the Underworldpodcast at gmail.com. And please, please support our sponsors so they keep giving us money.

Now, usually we bring you a well-crafted narrative, a storytelling masterpiece about an organized crime group or person or even just a phenomenon. but it is the holiday season, dude, we're tired. We got you guys like 50 episodes this year. So we are bringing you something we call Stash House, which we do once a month for the Patreon in addition to interviews that we put up there. It's basically like our impression of every other podcast. Like instead of our usual thoroughly researched

or reported, beautifully written stories, we're just going to kind of BS about organized crime stories of the week. Like isn't that basically when most other podcasts are, right? You like read a headline, you infer some stuff from it that probably isn't true. And just talk nonsense. Like much, it's much easier than our usual stick, right?

Yeah. We can do this. We can, we can, we can play it by here. There's, there's stuff happening in the world, right?

We can just sort of shit talk for a while. Yeah, I mean, you just kind of BS about, about nothing. And people seem to like it. Maybe not when we do it, but what other people do it.

So we're gonna, we're gonna give it a shot because I can't tell you how much easier it is to do this than to like research and write 5,000. words. Yeah, yeah. We can just do this every week and get away with it and not hate ourselves. We would do this. Okay, Sean, Capdagon, buddy. We got to talk about Capdagon, A, because we've been

telling the listeners for like three years that you're going to do it and talk about what it is. And B, because it's all over the news because of Syria, you know, you've got these videos coming out. The New Yorker had a big story on it, I think a month or two ago before the Assad regime fell. Now, of course, we did an hour-long episode on it, what, maybe three years ago, right? That's how it goes. Yeah. Yeah, that's generally how it works. And we talked about, and New Yorker story talked about this in depth about how Assad Syria was basically a narco state generating. At last, I saw $10 billion annually moving this sort of bootleg, crummy speed into the Gulf states, southern Iraq, all that sort of stuff.

I think 2021 is when we first did something on it. Wow. But, yeah, the New York Times had an article, December 13th. What is Capiton, the illegal stimulant that made Al-Assad Syria anarchosate? Buddy, come on. Man. Catch up, you know? I mean, $10 billion is like a huge amount of money.

I mean, I guess you could call it an anarcho state, right? Because they ain't going to make any money out of tax in Syria. 10 billion. 10 billion. 10 billion. Yeah, not 10 million. Jesus, come on. This Times said it was Syria's biggest export during its 13.

year civil war. So that's sort of nicely done. That's set yeah so there's all this footage coming out of Captain on factories, big old piles of pills like Sean's apartment in Berlin when he was in his 20s. And everyone wants to know like what's gonna happen and here's the thing.

No one knows. We don't know. You got a lot of smugglers out of a job. Kids in the Middle East are going to be Jonzing. Assad is done. His brother who ran the fourth armored division and was like, you know, kind of the alpha in that relationship. and the tough guy. He ran all the Cap Dagon stuff from what I understand. What happens? I don't think

it's going to pick up a ton in Syria, but nobody is going to leave a multi-billion dollar market like that with these profit margins completely on the table. Like I'm thinking other organized crime groups, we know the Balkans, there were some situations there with it. Maybe the end on Geta, you had shipments that were going through. Actually, maybe it was the Sicilian mob, but I know there were shipments that were going through southern Italy on their way back into the Middle East, it's going to be tough to get those smuggling routes going again. You know, all the stuff was really a lot of it pouring in through Jordan, but you had stuff, you know, getting flown in, you had stuff coming through ports and whatnot. I just can't see it really picking up in Syria like it was.

Definitely not over that border into Jordan. But again, you know, where there's money, people will find a way. Smugglers will find a way. Here's a friend of the show Caroline Rose, who we interview in the Wall Street Journal. Talking about it, I think last week, quote, this absolutely proves that the regime was systematically involved in Capagon production and trafficking. They were able to make these facilities

as large as they wanted and plug and play. And you can imagine the manpower, the resources that were required. It shows such investment into the solicit trade. It penetrated so many elements of the regime. It's political apparatus, patronage networks, the security apparatus. And also, you know, Hesbola,

like had a huge role in this too. and they're kind of screwed. It was a big moneymaker for them. So I don't know. I mean, you've got the militias in Iraq, especially in southern Iraq. There's a ton of Capitagon that was going through there. By the end of 2023, this is, I think, the Times article or Wall Street Journal article talked about. Iraqi authorities had ceased 30 times as much Capiton as in 2019, with more than 4.1 tons of tablets confiscated in 2020 alone.

So the market is there. The money is there. But, I mean, your guess is as good as my – Actually, my guess is probably better. No, your guess is a little bit better. Yeah, I'd say it's a pretty good guess. We're the only podcast is going to tell you that we don't know stuff

because that's the truth of stories like this about the future. But also, is Capcombe, is it just meth? Is Captagon meth? Is it the same thing? Is it like Yaba? We went over this. What do you?

Do you just not listen when I do these episodes? But I tune you out. I tune you out sometimes. I'm not going to lie. No, I think it was, it's not even, Captagon was an official drug, right? And I'm thinking back to, episode we did years ago, so I might get a few things of this wrong. It was a real drug produced

by pharmacies, but the stuff now is basically just bootleg Capitagon. And like, I don't know, man, it's like maybe a little bit of meth, a little bit of Yaba, a bunch of other stuff, caffeine pills. It's not strong by any means. It keeps people awake. But, you know, this is what I always say. If it was a fun, good drug, you could get it in Berlin. You could get it in London. You could get it in New York City. The reason you can't, definitely Miami, too. The reason you can't is because it's just not that fun. It's not that good. Like, Americans aren't going to buy this stuff.

We've got proper meth here. We got real meth here. We don't need this bootleg stuff. Yeah. This is like keeping poor taxi drives awake, right? This is not Birkheim all weekend raving. No, it's like students and taxi. I mean, you know, there is an Adderall shortage, right?

Isn't there always an Ayriddle shortage? Yeah. And I'm just saying maybe there is a market here. Maybe, you know, maybe we are. Put yourself up as the next import. We start franchising Popeyes restaurants in Damascus. Everyone loves Popeyes.

The people of Syria deserve Popeyes. And we bring Capiton to the US so that people can stop freaking out about the Adderall shortage. Yeah, I don't see a drawback with that at all. Perfect import, export situation. Anyway, what do you got on tap there, bud? I was looking at some money laundering stuff.

So, like, I guess money laundering, I'm a bit obsessed with it. It's like the story behind the story behind the story, and it's blowing up. I think we did that episode on the Chinese stuff recently where the ballpark figure for the amount of money Chinese guys are laundering now is like $2 trillion, which is only slightly more than I can comprehend.

But there was a story in Wired recently. Actually, it was all over the news, but there was a good kind of write-up of it in Wired by Matt Burgess, who I think he was one of the editors there, about how this Russian social, an influencer and model was basically at the heart of a crypto laundering service that was all over the world. It's like really interesting story this. Yeah. I saw that. I had written that up too. It's pretty crazy, man. Yeah. Yeah. There are two outlets actually, two money laundering

outlets. And one of them's called Smart, which is good. And the other one is called TGR, which I'm sure that means saying Russian, but I don't know what it is. And they're based on Moscow. go and they will operating in 30 countries. And I think a joint operation between the NCA, which is kind of like, I guess, the FPI of the UK and the FBI. And I think Interpol is bringing this outlet down. And they have arrested 84 people in 30 countries, 70 of which are in the UK. And it all goes back to the pandemic, right?

So a lot of drug gangs making bank. London is going nuts. a lot of Russian gangsters working out of London. And this woman, I'm going to screw up that name for sure. She is basically quarterbacking all of these groups, these drug gangs in the UK and beyond. And what they're doing is they're kind of connecting drug cartels with people doing ransomware online attacks out of Russia. And one of them has got a bunch of money they need to get rid of. And the other group is really, really good at hiding the money.

So they're just connecting these sort of digital scammers and drug gangs. And they're just washing millions and millions and millions of dollars. I think they start to get caught by the cops when a guy arrests a gang courier in London with a quarter of a million pounds in his car, which is $315,000. And he later admits that he's moved almost $16 million for Katarina and her organization, smart and then authorities just kind of this is the kind of like web in the police station kind of going nuts on the wall and it's uh i think they've unlearth links between smart and the kinnahans which is another story people should be looking out for next year because that is going to change a lot

uh and the russian state broadcaster r t um and so far the nca has traced around a billion u.s dollars in drug sales through this one group and there's another guy called george rossi but i think his name's actually like Georg Rossinova or something. You're missing out on something really important. What's that? Which is that one of the guys arrested, I believe this is from a BBC article,

who was another courier who facilitated shifting 12.3 million pounds. His name was Seaman. Seaman Cox Off. Yeah, I'm seeing Seamen everywhere. Yeah, he's all over the place. Yeah, yeah. I guess he was the son of like an oligarch,

I think, or something like that. But it was, you know, the way it was described that I had read was that they had made all this cryptocurrency from ransomware attacks and they were sitting on piles of it but you know you still need to exchange that for dollars and that's

probably hard to do in Russia right now or in general so basically the gangs were trading their dollars for the cryptocurrency obviously a fee gets it's basic money right they used they all use tether these groups like the stable coins I think all the South Asian groups here's as well

yeah so they would they would you know these couriers who would launder the cash through seemingly legitimate businesses that were like construction firms in the UK or, you know, mulling it to Dubai. And then it kind of comes through the economy as real cash. So, yeah, basic money laundering, you know? Yeah, it's really interesting. And they said that there was one guy, I think it was in that BBC article as well, there was a Russian person that they hadn't named, which suggests that they're, I don't know, high up politically or in business somewhere and they're expecting to find a bunch more people so it's kind of a developing story and there's going to be huge amounts of stuff coming out about this soon and it seems like they gave

wired an incredible amount of access into the investigation so they're really trying to sort of ring the bell about this stuff so i guess the cops are going to be pretty keen to get the story out next month as well and uh into 2025 so it's a really interesting case there's going to be a bunch more stuff about money laundering in Asia as well because it's just rocketing. So I guess expect more weird buildings that fall into disrepair because they'd been bought with drug cash like that one in downtown LA that was bought by like speculative Chinese capital that's rumored to be money laundering, the one that's got all the graffiti all over it. I think people in LA will know what I'm talking about.

And there's ones all over the place like Canada, London, Sydney, New York. There's tons of this shit. So yeah. I wonder... How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount.

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Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326, participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. I wonder if it's going to affect my upcoming foray back into shit coins or meme coins or anything like that. You know, I actually want to be, you know, I've already been scammed enough in crypto, and I kind of want to be on the other side, like with the scam.

You know, just give like a nice little tip for the boys. Actually, I know my friend Mark is going to be listening to this, and he told me about a very good investment he made in a shit coin, but that he told me on the golf course the other day, and now I want to get in, and I don't want anything to do with the regular economy,

and I just want to buy coins that are like, I don't know, frogs or dinosaurs or shit. That's what I want. Far coin. Fartcoins valued are like over People made retirement money off Fartcoin And we missed it You know

This is horrible In all senses Like it's just terrible But yeah Get me in If any listeners Are like good at this stuff Can you email us tips

About this kind of shit Because I need them Yeah Speaking of our listeners 85 pounds of cocaine and fentanyl Were found in Brooklyn recently In Williamsburg of all places I think also $400,000

Of cash People don't know this. But, you know, Williamsburg, which you guys know as like the hipster and now kind of yuppie paradise, it has had a huge mob presence going back generations. And there's still some remnants, you know, don't get caught lacking in, in J.R. and sons, that bar. You know, you don't want to, you don't want to get in trouble there. And I've told this story before, but my old butcher and sandwich scop guy, when I lived there, I mean, 12, 13 years ago, who absolutely ruled. Very nice guy. I made a 10-minute doc about him once when I was in school. He went down for loan sharking as a

soldier and the banana family. Okay. Out of his butcher shop. But for real, though, he made the best sandwiches I've ever had in Brooklyn.

Like, best I've ever, they would roast the turkey breast themselves. I mean, it was just, it was incredible. But where was I? Yeah. Okay.

So, the mom, Williamsburg. Still real. The guy's name is George Capella. He lives in like a part that I would say is more of the Puerto Rican part,

but come on, George Capella, it leads me to recklessly speculate that he is both Italian and tied in. I mean, the guy got called with 33 keys of Coke, six keys of fentanyl, but that's a lot for like an independent

operator, but also like, come on, man, keep your fentanyl, keep your Coke separate. That's how people die. But here's the, I think the DA quote, 33 kilograms of cocaine, some labeled Moe and Amiri, Moe, what is this, like 2012, and over six kilograms of fentanyl, some marked with Louis Vuitton signals. The kilograms of narcotics were wrapped in various types of plastic packaging, including packaging bearing an image of the Star Wars character, Baby Yoda is pretty cute. A small amount of fentanyl have been dyed pink. Right. So I want to know what the decision making process is that

leads you to dye your drugs pink or put a Star Wars character on it or the LV. The pink thing is because of what's it called, 2CB, right? Became like a trend thing storing the last two years about pink cocaine even though it's not cocaine. It's definitely not fentanyl. But 2CB became very popular, especially like in Miami, and like rich South Americans are doing it for a while. I remember Toby telling me about it, I think. But, you know, just the allure of it.

You want to differentiate your product. Throw a little pink in there. Maybe he was trying to pass it off as 2CB or cut it. But yeah, just keep that stuff separate, man. Yeah. Contamination happens. These guys are not, I don't think George Capella is out there with a lab coat, you know, in beakers,

really keeping his workspace clean. People are going to die from that. know. Yeah. I mean, that's actually good advice. That's, that's, that's a proper public service announcement. Also, there are still some decent dive bars in Williamsburg, right? Like, it's not completely gone under. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's that Polish one on the corner of, I can't remember. Yeah, there's a, it's a couple of Polish ones, a couple of small ones, there's that metal bar, but it all depends on like, dive. I mean, unless they're like the really Polish ones, even the dives are going to be kitsy and that, which is fine. Like, I like a, I like a, a, I like a, a,

could dive. There's a couple I feel like I've gone to on grants, but I haven't been in years. There's a Polish dive bar on the corner of maybe metropolitan that's like you can buy cans of zivets for, I don't know, like five, six bucks or something. Yeah, see, I'm on a thing now where like I only, when I drink now, I mostly only drink good tequila because it's the only thing that lets me not be wrecked by a hangover or able to sleep that way. Why are we not sponsored by that? That's the perfect. Yeah. Get that. I think. I think Casamigos has better things to do. But yeah, so it's kind of tough because I love dye bars,

but like I'm not drinking Corvo at a plastic cup, dude. Like I'm trying to, I'm born in the 80s, dude. I need decent liquor to be able to function the next day. Well, I'll tell you what, speaking of that, which is the worst segue you will ever hear all year. Another listener, a guy called Henry Smith, he sent us a message to last month about weird heights. I remember didn't we go into the Niels Yard cheese high?

or something, there was, there was like thousands, yeah, thousands of dollars worth of, like, huge cheese wheels stolen out of, I think it was a London Bridge or something a few months ago. Pretty funny. They sold it to a bunch of guys in France or Russia or the Balkans or something. Anyway, Henry got in touch. He's pulled a couple of blinders here. Chiefly pointed us in the direction of a 2016 heist in Wales where a group of five bloats stole $20,000.

That's sadly probably about $20,000. $21,000 worth of sweets from a factory making jammy dodgers. Danny, do you know Danny? Danny. Danny, do you know Jamie Dodgers? I feel like you've explained this to me before, but I definitely wasn't listening. We've probably had every single conversation in four years.

These are small round, kind of shortcake biscuits with a jam heart in the middle. I mean, I mean, they're fine. I'm not going to sing to the rafters about them. They're fine. Anyway, these fellas, they're not just corner shop fees, right? they nick a tractor in Kent, which is hundreds of miles away, and a stolen work van from, like, the local rail company with false plates. This is like proper bank high stuff. But then at 3 a.m. they drive up to this factory, which is in the town of T. Koch, in Newport, sorry if I'm butchering

at Welsh speakers, but I think it's okay. One of the guys is wearing a high of his jacket. He's like, I'm here to pick up the jammy dodgers, and he convinces securities on this delivery run. Then he drives back out. He gets two stolen trailers. sticks them on the back of the van and he drives all the way to Liverpool, which is, again, it's like a not a short hop, it's 200 miles all the way through the Welsh valleys. These guys get caught because they're not master criminals, even though they're using all the accoutrements of master gangs. And then one of them's been done previously, also for Nick in a trailer containing 40

grand's worth of beer. And this guy gets, I think he gets 40 months sentence. They get 11 years total, mostly like 18 month sentences, stuff like that. And as they're being sentenced, this is the best bit. A member of the gang shouts out, anyone want a biscuit, which is pretty good. I mean, I don't know how you're going to sell 20 grand's worth of jammy dodgers on the black market. But, you know, Henry isn't done there, by the way. He mentions a 28-11 Canadian maple syrup heists.

I think they've actually been made into a documentary on Amazon called the Sticky, which I'm probably not going to watch. There's a new black market in pinchedamine in Chile, apparently. And then there's that spate of Lego heist in L.A. Paris and a couple other place. I think I did a stash house on that a while ago. And then I look at a decent shout for weirdest heist might be when Russian gangsters showed up in a tiny town of Warsaw, Missouri, and they were going to steal paddlefish for their caviag, I guess low rent caviar. We actually covered that in the caviar and the Mafia episode

from back in summer 2020. So yeah, heist, love them. Keep them coming. Many thanks to Henry. Let's have more emails about weird heists. Yeah, in related news, in terms of terms of like crimes of that nature. The founder of the Gulf cartel is getting sent back to Mexico. Ozil Cardenas, who also helped create Los Zetas, so, you know, very accomplished in the cartel worlds,

have been extradited to the U.S. 2007, now being sent back. I believe he was just charged with a whole bunch of new crimes in Mexico and was going to be held in Mexican facilities. But, yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. We know that, what's his name in Caborka? Rafael Carl Kintaro got out Pretty technicality

I think right And then he was like 70 Went back to work with the Cabork cartel Making it happen He actually screwed over my plans That one time to hang out with that guy So

Yeah Not very nice The worst thing he's done But yeah how long How long until Our Gien is out I don't know And the question is

I think he's gonna be He's 57 right now So still a couple of good years Left in front of him The main question is When he does get out. Does he go back to work with a cartel or start a TikTok account or start a podcast? Or does he just do all three? If so, uh, holler at us. Let's, uh, let's make something together.

Yeah, please. Um, I was going to flag up just for the new year that sports are going to be a really, really massive thing to look out for in terms of organized crime. Uh, oh, in terms of order. I thought you meant like in general, sports are hot right now. Just watch the darts just because It's the best thing in the world. But, um... Bonjour, comadre. It's the... Priceline negotiator!

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Book direct at Soysotails.com. I've been following a bunch of stories about footballers being tricked by false agents and clubs and whatnot. I mean, there's an excellent substack by Chris Dalby, who's written all about organized crime for the Guardian Insight Crime. It's called Sports and Crime, which, yeah, do what you say. And I saw a story, I think, that Chris had done a couple weeks back about an Angolan-born Portugal under 17 star, who I think a lot of you are going to know about soon because he's about to sign for Barcelona. he was like amazing in the World Cup but then his family transferred him

to this fourth division Croatian club which is just outside Zagreb so I might actually look into this when I'm there and the kid had been playing for Porto which is one of the biggest sides in Europe obviously in Portugal and it seems that his father who has lived in Croatia wanting to go there so this

where it gets really really murky there's been all kinds of accusations that the kid was kidnapped that there was an extortion thing going on it actually seems that his dad was actually his uncle, who was his legal guardian, and he was trying to get this kid away from Porto to this shit Croatian club because it's something called a bridge transfer, right? So you go with these shady characters trying to get young stars to move to, I don't know, like Donetsk and Zagreb and Woodch and cities in Eastern Europe, whatever. And they're trying

to get them to sign for these clubs illegally most of the time. So then when they sign for these huge teams like Barcelona, around Madrid, Man City, stuff like that, they can get a huge transfer. Now, is this illegal? Is it not? I think it kind of is, actually, where the FIFA rules are involved. But then it seems like this kid actually was kidnapped.

He wasn't heard of for months. And there's all kinds of stuff with this shady Croat agent who actually got Danny Olmo to Barcelona back in the day. He's another huge player if you don't know who he is. And so Cardoso Varela is, is this kid's name. He's actually, it was born in Angola,

plays for Portugal, there's some controversy around whether he's got Portuguese citizenship at all. So that's another scandal around this kid. But he's about to sign for Barcelona. And it's all over the news. I just typed his name in. And there's tons and tons of stories on him. So that's one way that sport and crime are going to be wound up in the next year. Also, there's betting.

I mean, betting is massive. I think at the moment illegal betting is almost $2 trillion. I think it's $1.7 trillion. there's been all kinds of stories in cricket, which is the base of all of this stuff where players are just like, I don't know, scooping the ball up in the air so they can get caught out or bowling no balls.

There's stuff about a baseball league coming to the Middle East, which is based on these weird cricket leagues. I'm going to look into that, actually. I'm trying to do a story for that early next year. So, yeah, look at sport. It's going to be a huge part of the organized criminal world and a massive way for people to launder their cash. I didn't realize this was going to be like,

what's hot or not for 2025 in crime world? Yeah, I guess I just veered off in that direction. But yeah, maybe because I was looking at stuff to do in Zagreb, and I don't know if there actually is, and then I found this kid, and I thought, oh, that's kind of interesting. But if I can find some grizzled old guy with a shotgun and a leather jacket, I will interview him for the pod.

But if I can't, I will find the least. legal guardian of Cardoso Varela, because that's the big story there. No idea. But I support you in all your endeavors. Thank you. And I hope you enjoy your trip away. Okay, my last one, I got home. You know, we love the old school sort of Chinatown gangster stories.

I think we did a couple of episodes on them a while ago, years ago, on the Chinatown Gang Wars in New York in the 60s and 70s and 80s that went through that whole history. And they're fascinating. And it's such a hidden world. Even today, I mean, it's far. less, I think, far less out there than it was. And it's definitely moderated. But it still pops up every once in a while to the surface. And, you know, the New York Times just had this big article called How a Criminal with Close Ties became, to China became a New York power broker.

So it's got the added sort of not just a Chinatown gangster who's like a political wheeler dealer. He's also doing stuff for the CCP. John Chan was a Chinatown gangster before remaking himself into a powerful force in New York politics. One closely aligned with the Chinese Communist parties. For years, Mr. Chan has exerted influence over the city's ethnic Chinese communities, reaching into back rooms and political clubhouses from Sunset Park

in Brooklyn to Manhattan's Chinatown to flushing in Queens to help sway elections, all without drawing much attention. I mean, you know how it is, man. You get those massive voting blocks and you got some sway, but his history as a Chinese gangster is more

I think in line with us. His back stories right up our alley. He escapes Mao's China in the 1970s, heads to Hong Kong where a lot of of these gangsters were sort of forming up where these gangs came from, joins a gang, becomes a triad, comes to New York, gets a lot of work as a smuggler and, you know, a snakehead. I think we did the episode on the... Oh, yes, Sister Ping. What was your... Yeah. So the snakeheads are the ones who bring in all the Chinese illegally into the U.S. and they charge upwards like $30,000 or $40,000. They make a ton of money. He became a restaurateur, which was what a lot of gangsters did and activists.

But he gets popped in 2001 for smuggling Chinese migrants and a few other things. Apparently, he was facing a very long sentence, but he snitched out on a legendary Frank Ma, who people call the last of the real Asian godfathers in New York's Chinatown. He ended up pleading guilty, not Frank Ma, this guy, John Chan, to a charge of racketeering, heroin smuggling, trafficking more than three kilos of heroin, human smuggling, operating illegal gambling pollers. So he was in on all the old school classic China town gangster stuff.

The people smuggling, the heroin, and the gambling pollers. Those are the three building blocks right there. He was since time served. I think he did five years. Ma was arrested in 2010, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. So, you know, he snitch it out.

But now he's, you know, out there, he's a moving, like real boss Tweety type stuff, you know, with the modern twist of the CCP calling the shots. Against the backdrop of recent events, he has stood out nonetheless as a quote, both for his overt connections to the Chinese government and for his ability to influence American elections up and down the ballot. He has done it in part through a network of nonprofits that he and his allies control, directing

money, staffing, and votes to his favorite candidates and organizing demonstrations against anyone opposed to Xi or his policies. So anyone opposed to China's policies and everything. His targets have been politicians on either side of the aisle who might be perceived as acting against the interest of the Chinese government. So it's, you know, taking that quintessential Chinatown gangster story one step

further. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this stuff is still out there, man. It's fascinating. I actually, I want to do more on the Chinatowns in like California. Like San Francisco, obviously shrimp boy, a couple of other good ones. Get out there. Got some books on and so. Get out there.

Get on a flight. We got to do this. That would be an amazing thing to get you down. Nobody wants to go to set. I don't want to go to San Francisco, dude. I'll go to Southern Cal. I got no interest in going to San Francisco. Okay. Or Oakland.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm good. But, yeah, I mean, I'm, I think this story, it's interesting, the stuff just pops out, you know, and then it just kind of disappears. But, like, how this going on? Yeah, I mean, you know, on a similar note, you know, shout out to Prince Andrew when he's not done being a child abuser and a complete moron. And he's getting poned by some Chinese businessman with links to the CCP. Did you see that came out this week as well?

No. It's just been powers with a guy who's a spy. And now they've just chucked him out of the royal family, I think, all together, which they should have done a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm more like these guys, you know, every sort of ethnic enclave in New York that's still sort of, you know, pretty concentrated or or has a sort of unified collective thing to it. You know, there's these guys that are just like wheelers and dealers that are operatives. a lot of them are above par, but it's just, it's fascinating to see how that still works, you know, with new communities coming over. And those guys are, are hilarious, man. Like, there's some of the

real characters in New York, the sort of movers and shakers in those enclaves in those neighborhood. And they, you know, it's every, every group. You can find them, you know, with the Albanians. You can find it with the Hossids. You can find it with the, um, the Dominicans. It's just, uh, it's like a tried and true thing. And, you know, those, those guys are always personalities, especially when they're gangsters who do stuff like this. Yeah, man, that's great. Can we get an interview with Frank Marr? That sounds like a pretty cool chat way to happen down in China.

I should look into doing an episode on him. You know, I think we mentioned him in a couple episodes past, but I don't think we've gone too far in depth with him. We might have, dude, it gets so hard to remember. Like, you know, I think what have we done like 170 episodes by now? and each of us probably like 85 and it's kind of like you forget stuff my memory doesn't work like it used to

so we could have done 10 minutes on him I have no recollection whatsoever dude my memory is shot yeah what's captive gone again I don't know I found this is like my and now for something different I wanted to try and find like a Christmas

a Christmassy themed crime that happened and I found a pretty strange 2010 case from Seattle right so this is going to be pretty brief Sean Chanel, good name, was found by police stuck in a chimney and he claimed he was trying to retrieve his backpack, which is a tale that had the press dubbing him the Santa Claus burglar. Here's a pretty decent bit from a Seattle Times article back then, quote, Seattle Firefighters

pulled a naked Chanel from the rough-edged chimney after a neighbor reported hearing someone yelling for help. It's unclear why Chanel was naked, but it took Medics 45 minutes to chisel away bricks from the chimney to free him. so yeah he claims that he was trying to get his backpack but the backpack was sitting on the floor at his friend's house and i'll just add that it took jurors a whole hour to deliberate on this case so clearly the riders at the king county superior court are pretty damn good i hope that the pandemic has not seen to that so yeah that's a little something christmasy for you

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Call it compliance or call it Compliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to VANTA.com slash com. That has nothing to do with organized crime. That's just, uh, But it's disallowed crime, so I guess it's the rule. It's the exception that proves the rule. But speaking of Christmas, actually, Danny, if you open up your email, you might find something that I got you for

the holidays. Yeah, Sean, I actually saw this right before the episode started, but didn't know how to bring it up. Sean, uh, thanks to Sean Williams, you've adopted it, you've adopted symbolically, which is bullshit, I want to adopt one real. A Bronx Zoo Red Panda. Thanks to you, we can continue our

conservation work at the zoo and in Asia protecting animals like these and their habits. Look, I love the Bronx Zoo and I love right pandas. So that's very sweet of you, Sean Williams. You're a good man and I'll find... You will get a plush toy and a certificate and a sticker

in the mail very soon. So that's something that you can really look forward to. Actually, funny story, right? Yesterday I was looking for something that I could get you for Christmas and I found tickets right. So I was like, oh, this guy's on a country music kick at the moment. So I found tickets for Luke Combs at the MetLife Stadium.

And I was like, oh, I would have gone it. Matt, right, so get this. I was like, oh, they're really cheap. I'll pick them up. They're like 50 bucks of pop. I got two tickets. No way. It turns out the website was just completely poning me off.

I've actually now got two tickets to see the Luke Combs experience, which is a Luke Combs tribute act, at the Met, which is in Berry, England next May. and I am trying to get a refund. So if anyone from C Tickets is listening, please give me my money back. I'm going to stick them on the back. I'm going to stick them on the second market and get like 20 bucks each.

But yeah, that was a... I don't know if anyone's going to buy those. And I thought what else looks like Luke Combs? I know, a red panda. So I'll get you that. I thought you were going to say, I just bought tickets for a bunch of people to the PBR rodeo is coming to Madison Square Garden.

And January 3rd, I'm going. Yeah, that was in my mind. That's going to be incredible, man. That's going to be amazing. It's not cheap. But I went, dude, I'm going. It's going to be sick. I'm psyched for it.

I think that's it, right? Anything else you want to add? I hope you guys are still listening. But look, it's Christmas Eve, right? Like, what are we supposed to do? You know? Like, uh, do what we can. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you guys for, for listening. We appreciate it as always. Thanks for all your support throughout this entire year. Like our numbers have grown tremendously. Yeah, yeah. It's been amazing. Our angry comments are still there,

but there's definitely a lot more supportive comments, so that's kind of nice too. And we appreciate everyone just for listening. We appreciate you more if you're on the Patreon or if you buy merch. But, you know, thanks again for making this year. I think really good for us and our bottom line. We appreciate it. Cheers, guys.

Anything else? I think that's it. No, that's it. Next week. We'll be back with more story stories next week. Ryan Reynolds here from it. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please for the love of everything good in this world, stop.

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