True Organized Crime

Considered by Ty Cobb as the "finest natural hitter in the history of the game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career .356 batting average - which is still ranked third all-time - the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport's history. That is until the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.

Pablo Escobar was a mama’s boy who cherished his family and sang in the shower, yet he bombed a passenger plane and formed a death squad that used genital electrocution. Most Escobar biographies only provide a few pieces of the puzzle, but this action-packed audiobook reveals everything about the king of cocaine.

Most Escobar biographies only provide a few pieces of the puzzle, but this action-packed audiobook reveals everything about the king of cocaine. Mostly translated from Spanish, Part 1 contains stories untold in the English-speaking world.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony M. DeStefano presents the rise and fall of Vito Genovese in this first comprehensive biography of the legendary mafioso - from his childhood in Naples, Italy, and the beginnings of his bullet-ridden criminal career on lower Manhattan's mean streets, through his self-exile in the mid-1930s back to his homeland where he ran a black market operation under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, and his return to New York where Genovese made a fortune as the head of an illegal narcotics empire.

On 9 June 2003, a 43-year-old man named Magadien Wentzel walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Jonny Steinberg met Wentzel in prison in the dying months of 2002. By the time Wentzel was released, he and Steinberg had spent over 50 hours discussing his life experiences. The Number is an account of their conversations and of Steinberg's journeys to the places and people of Wentzel's past.

Pablo Escobar was a mama’s boy who cherished his family and sang in the shower, yet he bombed a passenger plane and formed a death squad that used genital electrocution. Most Escobar biographies only provide a few pieces of the puzzle, but this action-packed 1000-page book reveals everything about the king of cocaine.

This compelling nonfiction work takes the reader into a convoluted eight month infiltration of a group of squalid criminals trafficking in wildlife by two undercover game wardens. Latham doesn't hold back on the language in this book nor does he downplay the vile acts that occurred against both the human and wildlife victims in this twisted tale. If you think poachers are just a bunch of good old boys out for a bit of meat, this true story is bound to reshape your opinion.

A vain man of good looks, small means, and no family links to the mob, Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano steadily worked his way up to acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, becoming its leader when official boss Joseph Massino went to the clink in 2003. But at a time when the Mob was crawling with secret operatives and informants caving to government pressure to flip, Basciano obeyed the code of La Cosa Nostra. "I got faith in one guy," he told a group of mobsters during a secretly taped meeting.

From the beginnings of big-city police work to the rise of the Mafia, Rogues' Gallery is a colorful and captivating history of crime and punishment in the bustling streets of Old New York. Rogues' Gallery is a sweeping, epic tale of two revolutions, one feeding off the other, that played out on...

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.

The Calabrese family of Chicago is a close-knit, middle-class, multi-generational Italian-Irish-American clan. They operate family businesses. They work day and night striving for the American Dream. All three sons forge a bond with their controlling father, Frank Sr., and their soft-spoken favorite uncle, Nick. As a boy, the oldest son, Frank Jr., realizes that his father and uncle are also "made" members of another close-knit family: the outfit.

In February 2003, thieves pulled off the impossible—breaching Antwerp’s “impenetrable” vault and vanishing with over $100 million in diamonds, gold, and cash. No alarms, no broken locks, no trace. Dubbed the heist of the century, this true-crime account reveals how a crew of Italian specialists infiltrated the world’s diamond capital, outsmarted state-of-the-art security, and disappeared into legend. Riveting and meticulously researched, The Antwerp Diamond Heist uncovers the planning, execution, and enduring mystery of history’s greatest gem theft.

Goodfellow, capo, killer, thief. A man so diabolically evil that he ordered his eldest son to murder his closest associate, and his youngest son to murder his best friend. When Greg Scarpa was in his early twenties he became a goodfellow in the Profaci family by swearing a blood oath to the Mafia, at the time the country’s largest organized-crime syndicate. And for 25 years he betrayed that oath and the men closest to him by acting as a paid informant for the FBI.

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.

Numa realidade paralela ao cotidiano sangrento da guerra às drogas nas periferias, emergem aqui diversas tramas, nas quais circulam os mais variados tipos: dos jovens de classe alta que ganham dinheiro com o delivery de maconha orgânica nos bairros mais nobres de São Paulo aos ricos empresários que controlam o transporte aéreo de cocaína, ligando produtores e clientes no Brasil.

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.

In 2005, a team of criminals tunneled beneath the streets of Fortaleza, Brazil, and pulled off one of the largest bank heists in history. Disguised as landscapers, they built an 80-meter tunnel, cut into the Banco Central’s vault, and vanished with 3.5 tons of cash—nearly $70 million. This gripping true-crime account reveals the daring plan, the nationwide manhunt, and the betrayals that turned fortune into bloodshed. A story of ambition, greed, and the fragility of institutions, it remains Brazil’s most infamous “heist of the century.”

Over the course of the 19th century, the people of Sicily found themselves at the center of a struggle for freedom, one that ended up being long and often very bloody. It was during these crucial years of struggle that the Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing"), started to take shape. Cosa Nostra: The Notorious History and Legacy of the Sicilian Mafia examines how the world’s most famous mob formed, its inner workings, and the events that made it feared around the world.

How much do you know about the organized crime involvement of Irish descendants in the United States? How much do you know of the impact of British rule in Ireland? Religious conflicts? The backing of parliamentary and paramilitary groups by criminal gangs? Gun-running and drug-smuggling? A History of Irish Organized Crime is the perfect book to help you develop your knowledge and learn about social history, including the current impact of Brexit on the Irish border “backstop”.

Society has created many great men; yet before they were great, they were persecuted. During their plights, they stood up for what they believed in; even when others were afraid to stand. They were galvanized by truths, which created followers. It was then that trends emerged. The trends contradicted the norm and uprooted communities, which created fear. Society rejects what it does not understand. The unknown makes them tremble. The thought makes them cower.