Among industrialized nations, Japan has a pretty low rate of violent crime, a relatively high number of police, and a virtually non-existent acquittal rate. Yet, somehow the Yakuza persists.
posted on May 12, 2008 - View this thread

"The ‘Ndrangheta cannot be beheaded.” Organized crime is Italy's biggest industry. Most people are more familiar with the Sicilian Mafia or maybe even the Neopolitan Camorra, but it's the Calabrian 'Ndranghta (very in-depth article) that has police around the world worried now, especially after they were blamed for a six-person murder in Germany this summer.
posted on Nov 17, 2007 - View this thread

The Hollywood moguls were appalled...Hitherto, Tinseltown had the police and politicians in its capacious pocket, yet here, landing like a ton of hot manure, was this crummy magazine from the east coast. A sharp look from British Journalism Review at the career of Robert Harrison, whose 1952 magazine Confidential single-handedly "opened the floodgates of tell-all sleaze." Seems Harrison branched out from publishing a long string of 1940s girlie mags after being inspired by the Estes Kefauver organized crime hearings that gripped early TV audiences in the U.S.A.
posted on Oct 19, 2006 - View this thread

Organized crime growing in Canada, police chiefs ask for public to help Police chiefs in Canada seem to confuse Canadians with Batman. Who do we take on first? The Hell's Angels, the Mafia, or the Asian gangs. So many gangs, so few Batgadgets.
posted on Aug 21, 2004 - View this thread

GangRule - the history of organized crime in New York City. A growing database of photos, biographies, newspaper clippings and family trees from 1890 on. And for the godfather trackers among us, there's also Boston Mafia, which includes the history of a notorious contemporary fugitive, lately in the news via testimony from his brother, Billy Bulger.
posted on Jun 24, 2003 - View this thread

The Maltesos. Well, there's no Webistics, and Big Pussy hasn't turned up floating down the Fox River, but here's your modern American mob family, suburban style. Betty Loren-Maltese, longtime mayor of the Town of Cicero, which abuts Chicago's West Side, has been indicted for looting the town's health insurance system to the tune of at least $10 million. The US Attorney says it is the largest dollar amount in any single organized crime investigation. [more inside]
posted on Jun 16, 2001 - View this thread

John Salvati: not funny. Man imprissoned for 30 YEARS, known to be innocent by FBI, FBI kept him there b/c if the real perp was caught, dozens of informants would have been revealed. 30 years, gone, makes me sick feeling. There will be more news on this soon, I hope.
posted on May 3, 2001 - View this thread

High-tech world mafias breeze past borders. This is a good introduction to a disturbing and daunting problem that touches on many issues: online privacy, bureaucratic inertia, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the future of immigration policy. In the underworld, dealing drugs is day-trading while dealing humans is blue chip investing.
posted on Jan 8, 2001 - View this thread