True Organized Crime

Since 1994, South Africa has seen a worrying increase in the commercialization of murder – and has been rocked by several high-profile contract killings. Drawing on his research of over a thousand incidents of hired assassinations, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders are used to exert a mafia-type control over the country’s legal and illegal economic activity. Contracted assassinations, and the organized criminal activity behind them, contain sinister linkages with the upper world, most visibly in relation to disputes over tenders and access to government resources.

After a SWAT team smashed down stock-market millionaire Shaun Attwood's door, he found himself inside of Arizona's deadliest jail and locked into a brutal struggle for survival. Shaun's hope of living the American Dream turned into a nightmare of violence and chaos, when he had a run-in with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer. Join Shaun on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence.

Biloxi, Mississippi: After the fatal shooting of one of the city’s most prominent couples - Vincent Sherry was a circuit court judge; his wife, Margaret, was running for mayor - their grief-stricken daughter came home to uncover the truth behind the crime that shocked a community and to follow leads that police seemed unable or unwilling to pursue. What Lynne Sposito soon discovered were bizarre connections to the Dixie Mafia, a predatory band of criminals who ran The Strip, Biloxi’s beachfront hub of sex, drugs, and sleaze.

From poverty to lucky in love, Belle found her happy ending with a man named Mads…or so everyone thought. But when the wealthy Mads died a mysterious death, Belle collected the life insurance policy and remarried…only for her new husband to drop dead. With things going from strange to sinister, more men mysteriously die or go missing around Belle.

In 1997 a six-year-old boy questioned by authorities relayed disturbing stories of abuse. The more he talked, the more people were implicated in his shocking revelations. And he was only the first child to come forward. Within a year, fifteen more children with similar tales were transferred out of the Bassa region of Italy to protected locations. Their parents were accused of belonging to a satanic sect that performed sex rituals under the aegis of beloved local priest Don Giorgio Govoni. With each child’s confession, the network of monsters grew.

Some would say, we, the people of now, are living in the future. And as we take the time to look around at the infinite inventions and creative scientific solutions humanity has gifted us with to date, it's easy to understand their sentiment. But what about the often overlooked, but gravely authentic past of the depravities humankind has stooped down to under the guise of “science?”

Criminal exploits, secret agent intrigue, and clever disguises fill the pages of Francois Eugene Vidocq’s memoirs. A legendary figure in history, Vidocq is known as the first detective and an inspiration to great writers such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Edgar Allen Poe. As a player in the criminal underworld, Vidocq is a master of disguises and an accomplished thief, eventually turning his unlawful talents toward catching criminals as the first French chief of secret police.

In what has been described as a true-life blend of Grumpy Old Men and Ocean's Eleven, Sexy Beasts is an insider account of the 2015 Hatton Garden Heist, in which a group of retirement-age career criminals - the so-called "Diamond Geezers" - robbed a London jewelry vault, in what would be the biggest burglary in UK history. The Hatton Garden Heist captured the British public's imagination more than another other crime since The Great Train Robbery. It was supposed to make a fortune for a team of old time professional criminals. Their last hurrah.

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Borderland Beat project is collaboration from a group of people of different backgrounds located in the US and Mexico that gather information related to the Mexican drug cartels and presents it in English through the internet, publications, and presentations. The information in this audiobook is fast-paced, with a lot of drug trafficking organization (DTO) information thrown at you at once. It's filled with hit men activity and the Mexican government's attempt to intervene, but it also contains a lot of direct, behind-the-scenes information from the author.

Over the course of his 27 years with the DEA, Ed Follis bought eight-balls of cocaine in a red Corvette, negotiated multimillion-dollar deals onboard private King Airs, and developed covert relationships with men who were not only international drug traffickers but - in some cases - operatives for al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Shan United Army, or the Mexican federation of cartels. Follis was, in fact, one of the driving forces behind the agency's radical shift from a limited local focus to a global arena.

Throughout history, black market goods, weapons, narcotics, and other assets have been transported across borders within rural and metropolitan areas of every nation. A lucrative business, operated by thousands of sophisticated criminal organizations, it is responsible for death, destruction, and ripping apart families and nations. Its reliance is on supply and demand, and it operates through a system of carefully designed and deployed clandestine measures throughout the world.

A pack of men in sharp, tailored suits and dark sunglasses strut down the street. Their eyes are shielded, but the icy scowl on their faces is a clear sign to stay out of their paths. A few of their collars hang open, showing off a glimpse of the vibrant and intricate ink work on their chests, and presumably, their entire bodies. Tattoos are the norm these days, but then, one suddenly spots a man with a peculiarly pint-sized pinkie.

When Baltimore Police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer - one who he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation. In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them.

Dan “Tito” Davis is the ultimate survivor. Having been an international fugitive for over 13 years, and across more than 54 countries, Tito had evaded the tough, three lettered trio of the F.B.I., C.I.A., and the D.E.A., and then, for good measure, the U.S. Marshals, Homeland Security, U.S. Customs, Interpol, local law enforcement agencies, immigration agents, mercenaries, guerrilla organisations, professional kidnappers, career hit-men, vigilantes, human traffickers, and most other entities worth being wanted by.

Italy's ultras are the most organised and violent fans in European football. Many groups have evolved into criminal gangs, involved in ticket-touting, drug-dealing and murder. A cross between the Hells Angels and hooligans, they're often the foot-soldiers of the Mafia and have been instrumental in the rise of the far-right. But the purist ultras say that they are insurgents fighting against a police state and modern football. Only amongst the ultras, they say, can you find belonging, community and a sacred concept of sport.

In 1988, Alphabet City burned with heroin, radicalism, and antipolice sentiment. Working as a plainclothes narcotics cop in the most high-voltage neighborhood in Manhattan, Detective Sergeant Mike Codella earned the nickname “Rambo” from the local dealers, as well as a $50,000 bounty on his head. The son of a cop who grew up in a mob neighborhood in Brooklyn, Codella understood the unwritten laws of the shadowy businesses that ruled the streets.

Eine True Crime-Geschichte um die Brüder Franz und Erich Sass aus Berlin-Moabit: Die beiden galten als zwei der berühmt-berüchtigsten Verbrecher Deutschlands, die seit frühester Jugend jahrelang ihr Unwesen getrieben hatten, bis sie ihr "Glück" auch in Dänemark versuchten. Dies misslang jedoch, und es blühte ihnen nach ihrer Entlassung aus dem dänischen Gefängnis 1938 ein bitteres Ende in ihrem Heimatland, das bereits von den Nazis regiert wurde.

On August 14, 1975, eight daring thieves ransacked 148 massive safe-deposit boxes at a secret bank used by organized crime, La Cosa Nostra, and its associates in Providence, Rhode Island. The crooks fled with duffel bags crammed full of cash, gold, silver, stamps, coins, jewels, and high-end jewelry. The true value of the loot has always been kept secret, partly because it was ill-gotten to begin with, and partly because there was plenty of incentive to keep its true worth out of the limelight.

John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. It was the early 2000s, a boom time for painkillers, and he developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.