Underworld exposes the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run. Journalists Danny Gold and Sean Williams bring their experience reporting on dangerous people and organizations to take listeners on a global tour of mobsters, warlords and crooks - from Brooklyn to Beijing, from the streets to the boardrooms - and everywhere in between. Underworld is a show about heroes, villains, and the barely visible mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.
255 episodes transcribedJon Lee Anderson is an author and staff writer at The New Yorker. Anderson recently profiled Ecuador’s young president Daniel Noboa for a piece entitl...
As Colombia's cocaine industry exploded in the 1980's, Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel became the dominant player, capturing headlines across the worl...
When gunmen ambushed a Mexican-Chinese businessman outside his Guatemala City casino in 2016, few outside the DEA paid much attention. But the shootou...
Something about Bum Farto, Key West’s fire chief, stunk. And it wasn’t just his red suits, bling and lime green company car. By the early 70s Florida’...
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia fought a guerrilla war against Colombia’s government - as well as against right wing militias and drug cart...
The Tren de Aragua grew out of disastrous regime policies to give gang leaders more power in prisons. Its mysterious leader, Niño Guerrero, soon contr...
In the chaos of 1970’s New York, it took a lot to shock the city. But the Westies managed to leave quite the impression. Dubbed the last of the Irish...
This year, the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert has been rocked by the death of 16-year-old Preston Lord, at the hands of a group calling themselves the ‘Gil...
In recent years, Sebastian Marset has emerged as the first narco kingpin out of Uruguay. He rose from a mid-level weed dealer to an international cart...
When Mohammed Alaa Allawi, a former US military interpreter, moved to Texas in 2012, selling weed was a side hustle. But when a company asked him to d...
Bombshell out of Mexico, El Mayo (!!!!!) is in US federal custody after arriving on a small private plan alongside El Chapo's son, Joaquin Guzman Lope...
When Nelson Mandela and the ANC delivered South Africa from Apartheid in the 90s, hopes were high that the country could become a beacon of freedom an...
Sam Walker already had a huge rap sheet in his native Liverpool before 2018, when he took off across Europe and through the Sahara Desert into Sierra...
With El Chapo locked up in a supermax prison and never going home, there's been a battle to maintain the power of his feared Sinaloa cartel. Many thou...
In the mid 90's, the Quebec Hells Angels made an offer to every drug trafficking organization in Montreal: buy from us or die. The Rock Machine motorc...
For years the Pacific region, and its tiny, tropical nations, steered clear of the global meth and cocaine trade. But politics, war and wild profit ma...
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club first chapter emerged in the US in the 1940's but didn't reach Canada until 1977. Less than 20 years later, they woul...
Since 2019, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has smashed the country’s two main gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, throwing almost 80,000 people into megapr...
When hitmen shot dead Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver last June, Canadian cops blamed the government of India’s strongman leader Nar...
Louis Sarcella might be one of the most corrupt NYPD detectives ever, though he was once heralded as a master at getting confessions on homicides. A s...
