The Underworld Podcast - The Teenage Hitmen of Marseille's Gang Wars

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

You might recognize the city of Marseille as the home of one of the biggest drug trafficking operations in history, the French Connection. These days, though, it's no longer Corsican mobsters using France's second biggest city as a transshipment point to move heroin across the Mediterranean. Instead, the last two decades have seen street gangs of mostly North African teenagers warring over retail drug spots that can make over $100,000 a day. 2023 saw nearly 50 narco-homicides, as the French police call them, as a gang known as the DZ Mafia started to take control. And the violence is only increasing, as AK-47's become the guns of choice and 15 year old hitmen are hired off of telegram and paid 20,000 euros to kill other teenagers and then post about it on snapchat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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He was caught breaking into supermarkets and stealing bottles of alcohol. Not exactly Al Capone. So the convoy taking him is small, only five guards or so. The van transporting him is going through a toll booth, when all of a sudden, it's rammed by a black sedan going the wrong way. From behind, a white Audi follows it, boxing it in. Four men jump out, clad in all black with Balaclava's cover. covering their faces, holding AK-47s.

They start letting off dozens of shots. It's a prison break. And the man they're trying to bust out is a guy by the name of Muhammad Atra, otherwise known as the Fly. He's young, about 30, and already has a bunch of convictions, though none of them are for anything really big, including drug trafficking. In recent months, though, he's faced some serious new charges. One of those charges is for attempted murder, and the other is for helping organize a kidnapping

that led to the murder of a drug dealer whose body was found burned in the back of a car. That happened in Marseille, a port city in the south of France, and it's what they now call a Marseille barbecue. See, everything ties back to Marseille. Even though Time Magazine just ranked the Marseilles neighborhood as the coolest in the world in 2024, it's become a symbol of the out-of-control violence. perpetrated by drug gangs across France. It's gotten so bad that even the interior minister

has referred to the Mexicanization of the city. Still, Marseille is not exactly a stranger to wild drug gangs and organized crime. The French connection and all that, the most infamous heroin trafficking operation of all time, was based there. That's where the Corsican mafia, refined smuggled morphine into heroin

and then shipped massive amounts of it into the U.S. for decades. Before the rise of the cartels, it was probably the most famous and most profitable drug trafficking operation in the world. That got stamped out in the 1970s, but Marseilles has still maintained a healthy amount of drug trafficking. And the Corsican mob got replaced by French North African street gangs in the 2000s, more focused on retail selling than having a large international trafficking operation. Since then, the city has seen periodic outbreaks of violence, shocking for European cities. Things now, though, have really gotten out of control. 14-year-olds are being recruited as hitmen off of Telegram, giving Kalashnikovs and sent to kill 15-year-olds.

In 2023, there were 49 narco homicides, as they're now called. The overwhelming majority of them happening between two gangs, the DZ Mafia and the Yoda clan, whose leaders direct the violence from Algeria or Morocco, sometimes Dubai. The DZ Mafia has really rampings up, and they were said to have been behind three quarters of those murders. Back to Amra, the Fly, escaping from a prison transport. He's alleged to be only a mid-level dealer, independent, though with ties to a gang called the Blacks that fought a war against another gang in 2021 that saw seven people killed just that summer.

The Blacks are actually now battling the DZ Mafia, but we'll get to that. The operation to free him, It'd be one thing if he was a major boss, but he's not even seen as a big player, which makes the fact that even someone as small as him could organize a jailbreak like this shocking. The operation is nothing if not professional. In a matter of minutes, two of the guards are dead, and the other three are wounded badly. And the fly climbs into a beamer to make his escape. As of January 1, 2025, he's still a fugitive, and many suspect he's already.

hiding out in Algeria. He's been quiet, but the drug gangs of Marseille are as loud as ever. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the podcast that dares to ask the question. What's up with France? What are they doing over there? I'm one of your host, Danny Gold. I'm joined by the other host, Sean Williams.

We are two journalists that have reported all over the world on stories of crime and conflict. Hell, I think Sean is reporting right now. I don't even know what country is in. and every week we bring you a story from the world of international organized crime of past, present, and future. Cautionary tales from cautionary tales, I like to say. As always, bonus episodes on patreon.com slash underworldpodcast or sign up here on Spotify or iTunes.

It's that easy. Underworldpod.com for merch, some great shirts over there, and the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com for tips. Story ideas, any of that thing else you want to say over email, monetary offers. if you have a place in the Caribbean from your stay for a month, things of that nature, etc. Yeah, hello everyone.

I'm in Seoul, South Korea, so that means I'm eating noodles in soup for every single meal, like every damn meal, which is incredible, not very good for your digestive system. Two hot takes from this city, the buildings are wide as well as tall, and the cars are all really shiny and clean. Good stuff.

So that's really, it's good observation there. And judging on a couple of nights ago, if a Welshman says he's got sausages in a bag, and the bar's got a microwave. You've got to get those killbasses out and have a sausage party with the locals because it is fun. Yeah, I went out with a Welsh sausage maker, an American arms dealer and a reporter, and it was very fun. But yeah, anyway, yeah, we want shit coin tips, fixed sports matches to bet on penny stock, pump and dumps. I don't know.

I mean, you've got to do crime if you're going to report on it, right? Yeah, we've been thinking about having like a segment or a Patreon thing where every month we take 10% of the podcast. earnings and just try to get involved in any sort of scam that we can see and see if we can turn it around. So we'll see how bored we get. But yeah, first episode, New Year, last year, our audience, through the roof, we want to continue with that. So spread the word.

Tell your families, tell your friends, tell your rich uncles to advertise with us, find the guys who work on GTA6 and tell them to buy our show, all that. But anyway, moving on. We're going to France. Do you know what they call an eight ball in France shown? I do not. It's not Royalel with cheese. It is called a bull de chuit, I think, is the pronunciation.

Probably not. I mean, I could do better than that. That's Sean level of humor right there. That's not fair, man. My puns are good and puns are funny. All right. So, Marseille, beautiful city on the coast of the Mediterranean, called the gateway to the Mediterranean, south of France,

second largest city in France after Paris, and one of Europe's oldest cities, actually. It's also something that we love very much here, which is a port city. You guys know why. And that port has been a hub for centuries and centuries. It was actually France's main port of trading with North Africa and the rest of the French colonial empire. So it's very cosmopolitan in a way, too.

Also, infamous for drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. It's notorious in terms of organized crime. We've talked about the French connection before. We're going to do it again real quick. Confession. Still have not seen the movie. I know.

I know it's embarrassing to do an organized crime podcast and admit that. But in my defense, Sean has actually never seen the godfather. All right, he probably, I think he probably has. I made that up. No, I mean, I never saw the third one. Yeah. And, yeah, the French connection is sick. I mean, all-time.

Gene Hackman, that guy, that guy had range. Yeah, yeah, he definitely did. But I should make an effort to see that movie this week. But the big war taking place there right now, the one that's responsible for 80% of the murders in Marseille in 2023. And I think one of the gangs is responsible for, most of the ones in 2024. It's between two gangs called the DZ Mafia and the Yoda clan or Yoda gang.

That's the one where they got 14-year-old hitmen that are getting into pitch gun battles with AKs. It is wild. But we will get to that in a minute. Though I think the DZ Mafia actually won that war and is now fighting the gang called the blacks, which the guy from our Cold Open, Mohamed Atara, he was involved with. But we'll get to that too. But for now, we got to go back a little bit to a simpler time, way back.

even before Serge Gainsberg was on national TV telling models he wanted to bang them live on air. Well, I mean, yeah, that and his daughter too. I mean, I'm not going to let you use this show to suggest French people are cool, Danny, because they're not. I mean, just because you put butter up a roast chicken's backside, you're not intellectual guys.

I mean, does anyone watch the darts this week? And that, that is culture. I have seen that video going around, which is awesome of that guy's entrance. But Serge Gainsberg is cool, dude. Like, I mean, Jane Birkin and Bridget Bardot and, like, two, come on, man. Like, if you guys don't know who Serge Gainsburg is, just Google that picture. Just Google Serge Gainsburg and Jane Berkin.

I mean, come on. How could you not love that guy? I mean, I'm just saying that Stephen the bullet bunting is genuinely cooler than Serge Gainsborough. And I want everyone to email in with messages of support for that view. I don't even know any of his music, to be honest with you. I might even try to know any of his songs, but I do appreciate his lifestyle. He's just kind of like mumble wrap in the 50s. Whatever, whatever it was, it worked for him.

But anyway, moving on. The French connection is when the Corskin mob started importing morphine from Turkey and a few other countries, smuggled it into Marseilles, and then used underground drug labs there to turn it into heroin, where it was then smuggled into the U.S., primarily in New York, but a bunch of other East Coast ports, with the help of the American mafia to feed the heroin addiction boom of the 1960s. At one point, I think it was responsible for 80% of the heroin coming into the U.S. And that is a lot of smack and a lot of money. It gets started in the 1930s, 1940s, but didn't really ramp up until the 1960s.

And it was put together by Corsican mobsters who had fled Corsica during World War II and set up shop in Marseilles, where organized crime control the labor unions that were working the docks. They also ran major prostitution rackets and smuggled in all sorts of goods. in the post-war era. I think during the war era, too. There was heavy corruption of politicians and law enforcement, lots of black market activity during the war and after.

They're also French and Italian mobsters involved, but if you're trying to get a vibe for Marseilles, I feel like it sounds similar to Sicily during that era. The Korskin mob, though, was not one sort of big hierarchical group. There were a few mobsters who had their own setup. I think I read that at one point, there were a few dozen groups operating there. They all had their own kind of ways of making it work.

And it's actually fascinating enough that I'd love to do an episode on just that eventually, or just the Corskin mob wars in general. My buddy, Olivier Sarbiel, who was one of the most badass and best documented filmmakers out there, go see his crazy black and white talk about the Ukraine war called Victor that's out now. He's Corskin, and he's just always telling me to do an episode on it, that there's just so much that happens on that island and through those groups. What's with, I mean, what is with like Mediterranean islands just generating massive organized

crime groups? It's got to be, I don't know, the ports, the sea access, yeah, or maybe the isolation, the constant sort of cultural exchange, the lawlessness. I don't know, man. Yeah, I thought it was the olive oil. Maybe the sexy dancing. They have sexy dancing there. Cocktails sounds a bit sexy as well, suntans. I don't know.

Could be all three, four, five. But then you'd have it like all over the Mediterranean coast. I guess you kind of do, right? Albanians, so that's a different sea. But, yeah, I guess it's just one of those worlds where there was so much. The Albanians. Greeks, but all the shipping, all the trade, I think probably. people on the move, I think probably contributed to it.

I'm sure there's studies done on it or academic things that are out there that probably are less fun to read. But it is interesting to think about. Super fascinating piece of info. One of the main, if not the main players in the French Connection during the 1960s was a guy named Jean Jehan. And it's alleged, I think it's alleged by the guy who made the French connection in the movie, that the French police gave him a pass and didn't want to arrest him because he was a big player in the French resistance and fought the Nazis and I don't I don't think he was ever spent a significant amount of time in in jail and and died of natural causes which you know maybe it should give you a pass to move a little

age if you're if you've killed a few Nazis you know yeah fair but like we got into with last week's show there were actually guys on the other side of that coin right there were oh yeah Nazi mobsters too channeling heroin cash into the anti-resistance efforts in France and then I did yeah the guy last week was he hopped on a boat to Buenos Aires and got involved in a bunch of bank robberies there. So, yeah, thumbs down to that guy, but this guy, yeah, less so. I mean, Nazi hunters, smack dealer.

He's on a net positive, I suppose. Yeah, give him a pass like the French police did. Anyway, the French connection gets mostly shut down in the 1970s. There was then a period of war called the Godfather's war where the leftovers were kind of battling for control. Still a major

prostitution racket there too, I believe, because, you know, French. In the 1990s, Marseille moves away from heroin mostly and becomes a center point for hash smuggling out of Morocco. And while Korskin groups are still active, you have these North African gangs of Moroccans and Algerians. I think some of them are immigrants. Some of them are also the children of immigrants that came there in the 1960 and 70s. And they start really moving into the drug trade and kind of, I think there's a lot of tension with the Korskin groups as well. And this, of course,

leads to some gang warfare, shootouts, violence, and organized, and disorganized crime. Many North Africans that come to France in the 1960s. for work and settle into these housing estates that eventually grow to be isolated and dilapidated. And the jobs kind of dry up too. And those, when I say housing estates, I guess, it's the English, what they call council estates. And when America here, we call projects. Interestingly, everyone talks about the suburbs of Paris, right, where the crime is serious. It's got kind of a similar phenomenon going on.

Sean pronounced it for me. What was it, Banalue? Banlieu. There, there it is. But the housing projects in Marseille are actually located in the city. most notably in the area known as the northern quarters, which we are going to talk about a lot. Yeah, le Catea Noir and Le Bainlieu. There we go.

I read asterix at school with all the other massive chads, Danny. Yeah, I mean, your pronunciation is always spot on, but just the man of the world, unlike me. So yeah, those gangs coming up, this new wave of organized crime begins to emerge in Marseille, fueled by the rise of hash and cocaine becoming the drugs of choice in Europe. These aren't like the elegant mobsters of the past. They're not sipping espresso in a corner cafe. These are young street-level dealers. Although I guess those guys were pretty brutal, too,

even if they did, you know, wear cardigans and eat quassons and like drink espresso on the street. Still do the same kind of stuff. There's actually a fascinating movie called Un Profits. It's a French film that shows this interaction and this kind of changing the guards between and battling between the old school Corskin mobs and the new North African gangs. I don't even know if it definitely takes place in Marseilles. It might be elsewhere in Southern France or even in Corsica itself. But either way, it's a great movie.

Definitely look it up and see it if you haven't. But yeah, most of these gangs now battling it out in Marseille, they're not Corsican, right? They're mostly North African or of North African descent. Some West African, and now one of the guys who had tip me off to the story was sending some stuff about a Nigerian gang that was making moves there that I think was related to the cults, Sean, that you did one of our earliest episodes about. Yeah. So apparently they're establishing a presence there as well, but I think they focus mostly on the sex trade there. And, you know, these gangs, a lot of them come out of these neighborhoods in the northern quarters, which is home to those big housing projects that are these really rough kind of poor, marginalized areas.

Yeah, there's like a massive wave of Algerian immigration to the city and to southern France, generally when they're the Civil War in the 90s, which was really, really super rough. I think there's 150,000 Algerians in a city of 1.4. mil so that is a lot. Yeah, yeah. A guy, the guy who lived in Marseille, who reached out to me, the chat about this story, he was saying in the south of Marseille,

very different from the north, it's beautiful, it's on the water, it's hip, you don't even really feel the drug wars and the violence going on. He was saying the guys, like, in his neighborhood, like, they're clueless. They have no idea what's going on up there. And in fact, Time Magazine

just named a neighborhood in Marseilles as the coolest in the world right now. So I guess there's a, there's that. Yeah, damn. Sorry, Marseille. You're now going to get Aussie baristas with like line tats and Perms. Game over. Yeah, just the outflow from Berlin right now when they're like to have, have that in warmer weather. But yeah, beginning in the 90s, 2000s, you had the emergence of these new gangs. By the late 2000s, there's already these reports about the out of control gang violence in Marseille. Though interestingly, in 2005, when there were riots all over France that started from, you know,

of this tension that these communities had with the police, and I think a couple kids got electricude when they were hiding from the cops, and that kicked off. Marseille was basically completely quiet because no one wanted to mess up the flow of the money and they had such control over their neighborhoods. There's this shooting in November of 2010 with AKs that kills a 16-year-old and wounds an 11-year-old.

And the Washington Post at December, they marked that as the, quote, discrete drug wars of Marseilles getting blown open. Though I don't know if they were ever really that discreet. It was the 18th killing that year between what they call the hash gangs, which, again, that's a lot for a European city. I feel like European cities don't usually see that much violence, especially that much gun violence. In 2013, you've already got France 24, you know, one of the main news channels in France, I think, if not the main one, doing debates on how the gangs are completely out of control and politicians are calling for sending the army in. I think during this initial battle that year, 20 people are killed in nine months.

again, a lot for a European city. Interestingly, there, then and now, the primary moneymaker for the gangs is hash, though I thought it was going to be cocaine. There is a lot of cocaine. I assume these were kind of like big international traffickers, more like a transshipment point, sort of like the Korskin mob in terms of where the way it was moving,

but the battling is mostly over point-of-sale spots in this city. They're fighting over retail sales. It's reminiscent of the crack wars in New York, like in the 80s. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels, get you more of the experiences. You value. The Cambria Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball.

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And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Beamer's Durfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before?

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it's domestic turf wars that's causing this violence. It's not about international shipping routes. I don't mean international. Like, Al-Badisi stuff is coming into France, but it's not coming to France

to then flow a ton of other places outwards. Like, it's not that sort of warren, right? It's literally about hand-to-hand sales, which is interesting. The hash is generally sourced from Morocco. Obviously, some of it actually is smuggled

through Spain, and then comes in from Spain into France, which I thought was surprising. I thought would all come across the border. The cocaine obviously comes to South America. It gets to Marseilles shipping containers or through the port. There's also apparently a lot of people from the French Caribbean or French Guiana

that are mulling it in on their person. But there is connection to Colombian cartels. You know, you've got Albanian gangs acting as wholesalers. There's some West and North African gangs as well and all that sort of stuff. And obviously really powerful North African gangs that are involved in that sort of trans-Mediterranean trade. In 2021, there's a war between two gangs. One is known as the blacks, which we mentioned in the cold open, and another is either known from or I guess they're from an area called Le Oliver. And I couldn't find much more on them.

So not sure if the name is accurate. Whatever the case, seven people are killed that summer all with AK fire. And they're fighting over a sales point that was bringing in 50K a day. So that's 50K euro. So there's money there, right? And the blacks are called that because they're made up of immigrants from the Camaros Islands. which is an island in East Africa that was a French colony until 1975. You know, and the Europeans, they're just not PC bud when it comes down to it.

No, I'll give you that one. I mean, interestingly, the Comoros is right next to Mayotte, which is still, that remained the French department, despite the Comoros becoming independent. And they had a ton of gang violence. They were up to a couple years back, machete attacks, like quite a few killings, not pretty stuff. I think the French might have sent in the gendarmes as well. but what is pretty is that that gives me a chance to talk about one of my favorite subjects,

which is the mad French Cup in soccer, where there are these overseas territories, right? Because of the way France worked, they literally counted as a part of France. So you get like third and fourth division teams, barely even professional, flying all the way from Paris to like Martinique, Tahiti, French Polynesia, Mayotte for a domestic cup game. I mean, that is a decent away day, although I don't know how the teams are. fooled it or how it even works. But yeah, interesting. Yeah, I mean, it certainly beats, you know, flying over to like Birmingham or something. But, uh, oh, oh, okay. Here's how the BBC described it in a 2021 article, quote, according to the writer and expert on Marseilles' poor northern neighborhoods,

Felipe Pujo, the killings in Marseille are always over sales points. The big bosses slug it out in Morocco or Spain. Here on the ground, the drugs retail has been subcontracted out and it's teenagers doing the work. This is also when the media and law enforcement start talking about how young the kids are that are doing the shooting. One interesting fact about this is it's not just young kids from Marseille. The gangs are

actually recruiting from all over France posting up basically want ads on telegram and on signal. It's like a summer job. This is another quote. It's like a summer job, but they're much more vulnerable than the local lads because they're so isolated. Investigating magistrate told Le Mans newspaper.

their lads do Marseille. I love that. Yeah. These kids come there, you know, they get food, they get housing, and they just, they post up. Young kids get recruited first as Shufs. That's an Arabic word for watchmen, and they get 65 euros a day. They might be 11 or 12 years old. Then they move on to like mulling weed from Spain, working the point of sales ops, and so on and so on.

But it's interesting that they're recruiting these kids from outside of Marseille. That's a part of it, right? Because like, you know, you see people talk about this and they mention the market. marginalization of these communities, the racism, the poverty, the lack of opportunity in Marseille, which it's all true, right? These are real phenomenons. But you have to kind of acknowledge that some people are making a choice. Some of these kids, these young people, they make a choice, especially if these teens are getting recruited from outside Marseille. You know, or like this killer we'll talk about who came from a middle class family. And they make that choice for easy money,

fast life, all that. And to be cool, like NGOs and sociologists, academics, they never mention the cool factor, which is 100% a real thing, especially as we're going to see when it comes to the use of social media with these groups. And it's kind of like, you know, they complain about the job opportunities and not being higher, but it's like they're actually trying, like, you can't do jack shit all day

and fuck around in school and that'd be like, I had no choice, I had to start selling Coke in a completely different town. I mean, not that's easy to come out of a bad neighborhood. You know, this is like my sort of boomer dad speech, but, or it's not easy to sell Coke either, like selling drugs is not light work.

But yeah, seeing the back and forth in the media about that is really interesting to see from an outsider perspective. Anyway, 2021, it's actually the bloodiest summer that Marseille has in some time. And allegedly it was because a bunch of bigger dealers being released were fighting over

territory, asserting their power back, including the leader of the DZ mafia, who I don't think the DZ mafia was officially a thing back then, but he gets released from prison and he wants to take back some territory. He previously had his part of like an iteration of another gang. Here's the Maghreb Times.

Quote, in March 2021, another trafficker considered a drug baron on French territory. The Franco-Algerian Mufide Bucchibi was arrested in Dubai and then transferred to France. A few months later, a man suspecting of leading a major drug trade in Marseille, Hakeem Berraibu was also arrested in Dubai and handed over to French justice. Most recently, Kareem Harat, Elias Rantamplein, a Marseille's wanted for a series of organized gang homicides perpetrated between 2018 and 2020 in connection with drug traffic in and who had fled to Dubai and then to Morocco was extradited to France.

So the bosses are not really usually in France. They're in Algeria, they're in Morocco, they're in Dubai. And you do have people getting extradited back from Morocco from the UAE, but not from Algeria, which doesn't extradite. I mean, you know Danny's written a banger when he's trolling the McGreb Times for quotes and info so top digging there i didn't even know that they existed did not either but good on them for you know making that maybe doing a regional newspaper thing and making it work as for the violence unlike a lot of european cities there's a proliferation of a case that leads to these crazy

shootouts a lot of them come from the former yugoslavia left over from the wars there but there's also knockoffs being made including chinese versions some people think some of them are coming over from libya too but i feel like the yugoslavia connection i mean we see that in sweden too right I think that's where a lot of these guns do actually originate from. There's this infamous incident in 2021, too, when three people are killed in one night in August, and it's over one of these point of sales. And these battles, basically, the gangs control different areas in the northern quarters, and they run them, you know, like your usual bodegas or supermarkets,

with a barricade set up so no one can go in or out without them knowing or having time to dismantle. It's the cops. They have complete control over the neighborhoods and the housing estates. I mean, if you've seen Gomorra, it's a lot like that. I'm actually surprised that in recent years, it hasn't really switched over to the cell phone game. There is obviously some of that, too, in Marseille. I think there's been stories about that.

But it seems like that sort of delivery service method is what most big ops are doing elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, this feels like saying Le Copps should look into, but I mean, I guess they're well on strike or necking wine or grabbing people's bums or whatever French people do. People, French police do. I mean, people do that. They do and we'll get into that, but like, they do do some pretty harsh raids and like they, they bang heads.

I mean, the French police are generally, we make fun of the French a lot, but they don't mess around, man. Like, they get aggressive, sometimes too aggressive, but like they, they, they knock heads. And it just seems like they've, they've either given up or they're not, there's some good documentaries out there on it that I was watching on, on YouTube where they got to embed with the French police for a day. And, yeah, it's one of these back and forth. It's one of these big, no, I mean, Doc, I forget who made. it, but it was like one team was with the French police and one team was with the dealers who love publicity, which is great. Oh, that's cool.

But yeah, these point of sales, man, they can bring in 25, 50, some even 100,000 euros a day. But again, I assume that's revenue, not profit. But still, I mean, they are making money. All right. Let's go to the origins of this war that kicks off in 2023 that I was talking about. It's at a nightclub in Phukets, Ireland, Thailand, which if you're talking to Thailand, to go to, not my first, their top 10 choice, but still nice. There's two men from Marseilles in the early 30s, and despite them each being the head

of a different major drug clan in Marseille, they're having drinks. Some sources have said that they once worked together, that they grew up together. One of them is named Medi, but everyone calls him Tick, and he has a brother he had worked with that everyone calls TAC, though TAC is still in the midst of a long sentence for murder. Tick heads up the DZ Mafia, which is just taking off at that point, and it's made up of Algerians and French Algerians. He's got a long history involved in the drug world of Marseilles, including doing a prison sentence participating in what they call that Marseille barbecue, which is when someone is killed, thrown in the boot of a car or just the backseat and the car is set on fire. In 2011, that that murder his brother did, they lure three young men who were former friends turned competitors on Christmas Eve into an ambush.

They kill them, then they set the car on fire. So he does that with his brother. both are sentenced to long prison sentences. He gets out in 2021 after getting 10 years, Tick does, for sending the car on fire. That's just what he was charged with. His brother is still serving a 25-year sentence for pulling the triggers, which seems light for a triple murder. But, you know, their family, they grew up with a dad who was a truck driver, stayed-at-home mom. He was first arrested at 12, though he gets into acting.

It was actually like a teen actor in two movies, one in 2002 and one in 2008. Here's a French magazine on his youth. At 17, Tick sees his first corpse. One of his friends killed over a drug deal. The first in a long series. At 21, his record shows 16 mentions. Thethed driving without a licensed drugs. By his own admission at that time, he had, quote, become a scum.

He earns between 300 and 500 euros a day, blowing it all in hostess bars and luxury clothes. And him and his brother, apparently, they said they launched the first drive-through drug market, but that seems like just something made up because like all these places you just drive through, pick it up and leave. It's surprising that, but this is France, right? It's not some place that nobody knows about.

This is a huge European country. It's got media and everything. It seems like background of these guys is really shady. And there's so much competing information. It's interesting, actually, given it's not, yeah, I don't know, it's just confusing.

I don't know. It seemed, there are elements, I think, of you don't assume that these are in Western era, but they are, Sure. I mean, this is like, the states have situations like this, too, but I guess it's different because we have a lot more guns. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's pretty wild, dude. Like, it's definitely, you know, Sweden gets a lot of attention. And obviously, there's powerful gangs, like the Kinnahins and whatnot in Ireland's. London, you guys like to stab each other. But this is pretty, for Western Europe. I mean, this is pretty wild. I guess Italy is probably, you know, obviously the craziest. Yeah, it was, it's really, the documentaries are really good. It's a fascinating situation. Tick and the DZ Mafia, whose symbol is a fennic fox, which they're very cute. The National Animal of Algeria.

Oh, yeah, they're cool. It's graffiti everywhere they control. They have a bunch of sales points in a housing estate called La Perthernal, or Le Perthernal, which is massive. It does massive sales because it's located right next to a major highway. So tons of customers coming in and out. They have an uneasy coexistence up to that point with the Yoda clan, which is headed up by the other guy in that nightclub. His name is Felix, the cat, Bingu. We. Yota Clan has sales points actually right next to them. They kind of use the same lookouts from what I've seen. Felix is involved in crime from young age two. He wants help with a prison break. He's done some time. And I've seen sorts of say that they actually grew up together in similar, in the same projects are right next door and had to work together. Nobody knows exactly what the origin of the fight is. But these two gang lords, they get into a heated argument in that club. There's some reports it was over a woman. More likely it was just, you know, gang bosses talking shit to each other, beef.

over control of La Pertrano. Felix is allegedly hammered. He throws some ice cubes that tick, you know, the disrespect. The next day, a member of DZ shoots a member of Yoda in that housing project. Then there's retaliation. Everything breaks down. And then these two groups go to war with each other. So this is another important point.

The violence really began to escalate to Marseilles between the gangs and the 2000s. At first, it's about control, you know, over neighborhoods, drug routes, and clients. but the profits soon grow and these rivalries they turn into like blood feuds entire families are drawn into the conflict Marseille becomes famous for like the settling of scores

you keep seeing this word the settling of scores mentioned over and over vendetta is also tossed around so on the one hand you know it is about control over the drug trade but on the other hand it becomes about like bravado toughness, revenge, image, retaliation all the fun stuff that leads to success

so these are not just They're not just like these drug gang murders, right? They start to become public murders. They're broad daylight. People are ambushed in their cars, gunned down in cafes, shot outside their homes, bodies sat on fire. And then there's these graphic, graphic videos that are uploaded in recent years to social media for bragging rights. Dozens get killed in the war in 2023, including 12 in one month.

These guys battling it out end up being responsible for 80% of the murders and attempted murders in Marseille. I mean, this is like, you know, it's not Latin America numbers, but it's pretty wild for anywhere in Europe. Even in the States, this would be like a, which has a much higher murder rate between two gangs. Like, this would be pretty serious. There's footage of people just rolling up in the middle of the street with jumping out with AKs, just letting off shots. 49 people are killed in those wars in 2023, which feels like a record high, like I said, besides for like Southern Italy for Western Europe. Yeah, that is a huge. that is a huge number. I mean, I'm surprised

they didn't get any media in the UK or the US actually. That's like really interesting. So it did. I mean, there is a healthy amounts of media about this articles that you'll see either English language, French stuff or in like some of the UK papers and the US papers. Not a ton of

in-depth stuff, but there's like short docs on it and things like that. So people were talking about it. It was getting attention. You know what I just realized too is that you know, I've been looking into doing an episode on the great Nordic bike war. I think that had a ton of like dozens of murders as well. So these things do happen sporadically.

But yeah, the Marseilles situation seems pretty wild. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to VANTA.com. Some of the more incisive French media, they're writing about how this is a war of teenagers on the street and how the bosses are all abroad, like I said, in North Africa or Dubai, calling the shots while collecting money hand over fist

while really not being under too much threat. And nearly all of this violence takes place in the northern quarters. You know, they've been deprived of resources, that run down. And they're basically run by the gangs now. Think lookouts and track pants, shooters on the back of scooters, you know, cross-body bags,

mostly first and second generation kids from North Africa and these run-down housing projects where they have these like, you know, garbage bins or concrete structures that say who can come in and come out.

They have the menus for what they're selling, spray painted on the walls. It's pretty visually, visually interesting. It would be great to do a documentary there. Here's how a, French crime reporter describes the current Marseilles chaos to the Times of London.

Quote, he described the uberization of the drugs trade. In the past five or six years, traditional gangs with well-defined hierarchies have largely disappeared and the wholesalers have recruited teenagers to do the high-risk street dealing, Pujol said. Like delivery workers, they earn little. There are about 50 wholesalers in Marseilles and 200 across France. They never get directly involved in street dealing. They arrange things so that the kids who do it are constantly in their debt, so they're always desperate for quick money and prepare to use violence to grab a patch of territory where they can

sell. It works a bit like a franchise system. It's kind of similar in a way to county lines in the UK as well, but it sounds a bit more heavily structured. I mean, also, I was just wondering, because all this stuff's coming from the Rith, is it the Rift Valley or the Rift Mountains, right, in Morocco. And we did a show on Rydwin Taggi and like the Dutch Mafia. And then the Kinnahans are involved there as well. There must be, is there no fighting, like south of the meds over this stuff because it feels like there must be i mean there must just be so much of this hash coming out of town but i would imagine these groups are fighting down there but maybe they're not maybe they're just happy to keep the fighting going on the other side of

the ocean that's a really good question about how it goes down uh in morocco i'd be interested to learn more about that um you know the morocans also don't mess around right like the government there does not mess around so i don't think they uh they would tolerate a lot of violence of that nature. You know, they, they're pretty. They keep things, I think, I would assume, under wraps and they wouldn't mess around.

I don't think the protections that exist for civilians, not civilians, but, you know, people in the drug game like in Western Europe exist there. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I figured they go, so maybe it's better to keep things under wraps while you're over there, but I'm sure, I mean, there's still, I think even in the Taghi thing story or some of the other ones

we've done about those gangs in Belgium and whatever else that have connections to Morocco, there were hits there here and there, you know? killed there. So I'd be, actually would be, that'd make for a good episode, dude,

you should look into that. Or not? I don't know. Yes? Yeah. Yeah, sure. I'll do that. Yeah.

All right. It's estimated that the drug chain of Marseille brings in 350 million a year. It all gets washed in local businesses, you know, in the city bakeries,

restaurants, laundromats. But that is a lot of money, you know? And what's that book where the sociologist claims that corner boys make less than minimum wage?

I forgot what it's called. It's someone in Chicago. But apparently in Marseilles, the Chubes can start at like 65, but they can get up to 150 euros a day. Chufs, I think how you say it, but like 300, 300 euros to be a street dealer, 400 to be like one step up. You know, that's not a bad payday. It's a pretty good ones. It just, yeah, that's all right. And the contract killings, right? Let's get to those. They actually have high rates. There's a very famous story of an 18 year old named Mateo F, who was from a middle class family. I think he was actually Corsican and became a

top hitmen, though really they're more just like shooters, you know? And this comes from a new book by three French journalists that just came out. It's focused on the teenage hitman of Marseille. And Matteo F. allegedly did six hits in like a month or two and made 200,000 euros or so he claims. Here is France 24 on it, quote, Mateo is the embodiment of a new generation of hurried, uninhibited, no-holds bar hitmen, write the tree of journalists. They are teenagers galvanized by extreme violence who think they're living in a video game but shoot live ammunition. Apparently

this is a real big thing these days, right? Young guys acting like they're in one of the video games. They're playing all the time like that Luigi, what's he, Mangione or whatever, the CEO killer and his silence gun. Apparently that's like pure video games. Folks think, they think that

a suppressor is better for a street hit, but it's the other way around, right? Because if you blast somebody with a loud bang, the witnesses are going to hit the deck, they're going to run away. And you probably won't end up chatting some girl up and then getting and shopped in at McDonald's a few days later. I'm just saying. I mean, I haven't seen the video game thing about him.

But yeah, like, look, we can, this is, I'm going to go on another like boomer dad speech. But like, yeah, this stuff has an influence, you know? Like, we can admit that now. Like, video games, obviously, movies. Like, even me, like, when I'm in the gym, dude and, like, finito comes on, I'm like, you know, I was born in the 80s. I am not doing any street crime right now. But I'm just like, dude, I want to leave here and just, like, shoot up a bodega window

right now. Like, you get hyped up, you know, and I think don't consider myself an impressible youth, and even I start, like, getting amped up, so I imagine, like, it does have an effect. And, like, you can see it, too, in social media. And, like, these kids posting this stuff. Like, it is, it's, it's just a fact. Yeah. But, you know, definitely. I mean, I shouldn't have played Wauphinstein before I moved to Germany, and maybe some uneasy interactions on the street. But, yeah, I take the point. That came rule, dude.

All right. So, Mateo F is hired by the DZMov. and he clearly did not listen to this podcast because he gets all this notoriety because he would post his hits on Snapchat and also post Snapchat of himself bragging about all the hits and the money he was making. He is, for lack of a better word or term, a complete fucking moron. Here's France 24 again. Quote, instead of fleeing the scene after his first killing, Mateo took the time to film his victim's bloody body, front and back, set his carolite in plain sight of a residential

block, and then post the gruesome footage on Snapchat, complete with his first. soundtrack and the DZ Mafia signature after the clan that hired him. And here's the crazy thing. The leaders of these gangs actually encourage the shooters like Mateo F to post this stuff in the hopes of terrorizing their enemies and not just encouraging them. They pay them more if the stuff goes viral. A police source told the local paper that the shooters can actually double their pay if the video goes viral if it gets more attention.

Quote, the greater the buzz, the higher the pay. Yeah, remember to follow our. Instagram and TikTok guys. Yeah. So, I mean, what that means is also there's like a lot of solid French TV news reports and documentaries because these guys gave pretty insane access because they're kind of morons, you know, but I guess it's working for the DZ Mafia, but still, it's like, I don't know.

Mattelia was first arrested for killing a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old, and the average age of the hitman in Marseilles is usually between 16 and 20. And like some of the dealers, they're often just recruited from outside the city. There's another absolutely insane story involving a 15-year-old hired by the DZ Mafia, but we'll get to that. That's a little tricky. We'll get to that in a second to target the blacks, the gang we mentioned a few times and from that war in 2021.

The DZ Mafia has mostly won that war against the Yoda gang and are now at war with the blacks. But there's this 15-year-old. He's hired to set fire to the doorway, an apartment where a member of the blacks lives. He's given 2,000 euros to do that. But he gets caught in the act by 30-year-so gang members. members of the blacks, and they stabbed him 50 times and set him on fire. The whole thing they post on Snapchat. So DZ then hires and sends a 14-year-old to take out like one of those gang leaders who had killed the 15-year-old. And he's in like a bolt car, like an Uber, heading there to

get revenge. And he thinks he sees one of the guys that he's supposed to kill. So he tells the driver to stop. The driver refuses, and then the kid shoots and kills, executes the driver. And the Dizi mafia guy who had hired the 14 year old, he had done so from prison, he's so pissed off about what happened. I think he's pissed off that his hate got messed up, not that the guy got killed. He then calls the cops and gives up the kid

telling them that he had hired him. I mean, this is like, this is wild stuff, and I think there's a reason politicians and pundits and France have started kind of talking about the, they're referring to it as the Mexicanization of Marseille, as they call it. And you know, one of the Marseilles state

prosecutors has said that the killings are, quote, characterized by extreme cruelty and a complete lack of humanity. Another prosecutor said he has warned that the city's drug lords are recruiting young boys to kill without any remorse or reflection. Yeah, this is insane. This is mad, dude. Kids these days, man, am I right? So, like, where are the police and all this? I mean, they do get aggressive.

There's raids and all that. There have been raids periodically over the past decade and a half. Lots of arrests. They ramp it up. But, of course, there's other accusations. that they've long abandoned these neighborhoods, that they don't care because it's poor kids, killing poor kids, that sort of thing.

And it's a pretty common catch-22, right? Some media is going to report that the residents say the police are too aggressive, that they're harassing everyone, others are going to say that the residents are complaining the police do nothing. They leave the residents to defend themselves. Yeah, I was watching a middle-aged woman speak to a reporter for France 24, some doc they did in 2013, and she's saying, quote,

they provoke us, that the police, the kids are all right, the problem is the police. And then a few years later, you know, there's an NPR interview with a filmmaker who grew up there. He's talking about, you know, the police have given up. It's become a no-go zone for them. He does also talk about, like, the unemployment and the misery and the sort of parallel economy that's taken over. And then there's this from the Guardian in July 2023, talking about French police conducting raids too aggressively or, or at the same time abandoning it. I can't even remember which.

Quote, as questions mount over levels of racial profiling by French police in the wake of the shootings in Nateti. Marseilles service is a warning of what happens when the police lose control or abandon a community. More broadly, it is seen as a litmus test for France. If its most multicultural city can foster vast Muslim enclaves viewed with broad suspicion and hostility by the police, then what hope is there elsewhere? So, you know, it's one of those things like obviously everyone just wants good policing, right? I think most people, but I don't know, man, I used to, you know, when I was, I did a lot of crime reporting in New York, and you'd be in, like, housing projects in like South Jamaica or Browell.

Brownsville, East New York, like, you know, notorious housing projects where you'd have a lot of kids like, you know, 15 to 30, 15 to 35 and everyone's like, the police are here too much, blah, blah, blah. And then you'd have everyone over 35, which would be like, please, we need more police here. Please send us more police. So there's always a sort of, yeah, mixed bag with that. I mean, the French thing is hard for me to suss out, having never been there and just gotten it off media. But it does seem like they, they do, they do crack heads, right? But is it enough? And obviously the answer isn't always going to be. just aggressive police activity. It's got to be resources and job opportunities and all that. But, you know, those are not things that come about easily. So it's, it's, well, I mean, this is, the kind of sometimes the media tells on itself a bit as well, right? Because this story in The Guardian is like, oh, racial profiling after the shooting in Nantes, which is a part of Paris, which was a completely separate issue. And then they've wound it into the story about drug crime in Marseille. and Islamophobia or something.

They're the ones kind of lumping all these things in together. And I'm, you know, the police, I'm sure the police are doing a pretty bad job in some cases and not in others, but I don't know, sometimes the media just sort of builds narratives. That's so simplistic. And this seems like a bit of, a bit of that. Yeah. I mean, I saw it the mark, I forget that doc, maybe it was,

but there are some good ones out there that really show the challenges on both sides on how things work. But yeah, the Marseilles gangs are now expanding outward, too, towards smaller cities and towns up the French coast, bringing some of that violence with them. I did find it interesting, though. I'd assume that these guys, like we said earlier, were major European players,

but apparently they're not really even the major movers in Paris or in Lyon. It's very interesting. I mean, if they get to Nice, then you've written the authorities are going to get off their back size and do something that will not do for the French. but yeah, this is crazy how siloed this all is. But it's kind of not, right? It's just this one international bridge between Marseille and North Africa.

It's interesting that, you know, the guy who wrote to us was talking about how, like, people are pretty clueless even in southern Marseilles about what's going on. I mean, clues in the sense, I'm sure they've seen the news, but, like, they're not affected by it at all. You know, people just buy, yeah, by their, like, buy their, like, by their, yeah, off the guy who comes with a, you know, scooter. or like an Uber and whatnot, and that's it. So, yeah, I don't know, it's fascinating. But a bunch of the kingpins and clan leaders have been indicted recently. Some even convicted in absentee. One guy, main guy, Mimo, he was knocked in Algeria in June of 2023.

He's been sentenced to 30 years in absentania for a murder in 2017, but again, he won't be extradited. Felix de Kato, the head of Yoda, was arrested in Morocco in March of 2024. I believe he's actually been extradited. He and Tick is apparently in Algeria. People think he was in Dubai, but left there, as we've covered, Dubai does extradite sometimes. In 2024, the killings decreased a bit. I think there was around 20. Mostly, I think, committed by the DZ Mafia.

They had ended up taking control, so there's no longer like a big power struggle. But Times of London just had a big article about the DZ Mafia headline, quote, The Marseilles Mafia, so big it's now a brand. And it talked about how they're expanding, you know, into old school mafia tactics. like the extortion and protection rackets of nightclubs, grocers, and rappers, which, you know, that's how it is, kids, your favorite rapper is being extorted. That's generally the case. They're also threatening prison guards and their families, even putting a bounty on one of the wardens

in one of the prisons their leaders are in because they're refusing to let the D.C. Hire Command get cell phones in prison. But apparently some of these claims are from imitators who now recognize the DZ Mafia as this powerful gang in the city, the most powerful one using its name. I remember that 14-year-old who botched the hit and killed the taxi driver I talked about? Kind of fascinating. Here's this Times quote about what happened. Quote, news reports highlighting the young age of the hitman prompted DZ to denounce the unauthorized use of its name in a bizarre video posted on social media in October.

It showed 15 masked black-clad men, flanking their leader, who appeared behind what appeared to be a makeshift altar, covered with a white sheet inscribed with the words DZ Mafia and Block Capitals. the gang boss who was not named denied ordering the 14 year old to carry out killing saying DZ had enough of its own men vehicles and resources to act if we had to rather than disavowing the use of violence it's a funny thing for

journalists to write in this story he objected to the gang's image being tarnished by association with such an amateurist episode I just caught that like what would they they think the drug is going to be like look we don't we don't support violence so this is raw like what are they

rather this is so debut I don't know bad that's hilarious but yeah claiming the the killing of a civilian was done by someone not in the gang even though the gang or someone claimed it was it's kind of an old old tactic so who knows whether that's true or not

but apparently these days freelancers yeah the DZ Mafia they celebrate every one million dollars they earn with fireworks big fireworks displays and as of November 2nd we're said to be responsible for most

of the 17 murders in Marseilles narco homicides, as they're calling them in 2024. And it's now expanding its operations into Brussels, so it's moving into that international corridor. And there are three street-level dealers currently in prison in France who order the hits and give directions over smuggled cell phones and the newspaper La Parisan, or La Parisian. La Parisian.

Yeah. Whatever. Claims that they have now ousted tick, and they are the ones who run the gang. But yeah, you know, dark times in Marseille seems. similar to a Sweden vibe that we've been hearing about. Though France, I think, is much more familiar with drug gangs and organized crime and violence,

especially in that area. But this certainly seems like it's been raming up the past a couple of years. Maybe a connection to COVID, I think, was pointed out in terms of how the selling was working, and the violence had ramped up. That's what the guy who emailed us said. But, yeah, they don't seem to be able to slow the momentum. I think 100 members of the DZ have been indicted since October, so they are pursuing them aggressively.

And yeah, that's where we're at. Bounty on the heads of the prison officials. Yeah, that's crazy. What a shit show. And, yeah, it feels like saying the police should probably try to sort out a bit more in the future. But who knows, I'm not French. Neither do I want to be or will ever be. Yep.

Should I just go to Southern Marseille for the winter and then set up shop there instead of trying to find somewhere in Mexico? Yeah, but only if you get like a knockoff Louis Vuitton, like sidebag. Yeah, I'd be on it. Yeah, Patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast for more episodes. The Underworld Podcast at jeml.com. Underworldpod.com.

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