Category Archives: Organized Crime

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Blog, Criminal, Drug Companies, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Nigerian Mafia Use Venezuelan Drug Mules to Reach Europe

A Nigerian trafficking network is now using “mules” to move drugs from South America to Europe, exemplifying how this growing drug consumer market is drawing mafias from around the world to the Americas.

A recent report by the Investigative Rebel Alliance (Alianza Rebelde Investigativa – ARI) zeroed in on the arrest of two Venezuelan citizens who had carried hundreds of capsules of cocaine into France in early 2020. This would have been just one of many cases of Venezuelans being used as drug mules by Colombian or Brazilian criminal groups, except for one striking difference. This time, the drug traffickers were Nigerian.

The ARI report broke down how Nigerian mafias have become a small, yet growing player in South America’s drug trafficking scene. This network uses Venezuelans as drug mules to carry cocaine to France, leaving from Brazil, Suriname and French Guiana.

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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Modern-day mafia plagued by mismanagement and bad hires, ex-FBI agent claims

A former FBI agent who spent years pursuing New York’s mafia said modern mobs are struggling with poor management and flaky new hires who are not used to the cutthroat world glamorized by The Godfather and Goodfellas.

The newer generation of mobsters who were raised in the suburbs is accused by its elders of being too soft, stupid, and obsessed with phones, according to a Wall Street Journal interview with Scott Curtis.

One associate for the Colombo crime family, for example, is accused of sending threatening text messages to a union official being extorted.

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Blog, Criminal, Legal News, Organized Crime

Ten members of NYC crime family arrested including 87-year-old boss

Ten members of NYC crime family arrested including 87-year-old boss

Members of a New York City crime family threatened violence, pressured workers and pocketed phony “pension” payments in a two-decade plot to seize control of a city construction union and its lucrative employee health insurance program, prosecutors alleged in an indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

Ten members of the Colombo crime family, including 87-year-old boss Andrew “Mush” Russo, were charged in connection with the scheme, which prosecutors said had all the major trappings of Mafia-type shakedowns seen in TV shows like “The Sopranos” and movies.

Prosecutors said crime family members pressured the union to steer health plan business to pals, sought at least $10,000 (£7,200) per month in kickbacks and threatened to kill a union official if he didn’t comply, telling an associate on a recorded telephone call in June: “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids.”

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Blog, Business Law, Criminal, Legal News, Organized Crime

‘I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids’: Mafia crime boss arrested in Charlotte, authorities say

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – A 75-year-old mafia boss was arrested in Charlotte and charged with multiple crimes including racketeering as several other members of the Colombo crime family were arrested in New York and New Jersey Tuesday, authorities said.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Vincent “Vinny Unions” Ricciardo, 75, was arrested and will be arraigned before United States Magistrate Judge David C. Keesler in federal court in Charlotte.

In federal court in Brooklyn, a 19-count indictment was unsealed charging 14 defendants, including 10 alleged members and associates of the Colombo crime family of La Cosa Nostra and a member of the Bonanno organized crime family, with various offenses including labor racketeering involving multiple predicate acts of extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion and extortion, extortionate collection of credit conspiracy, extortionate collection of credit and money laundering conspiracy, prosecutors said.

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Blog, Business Law, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Chinese immigrant in money-laundering ring: Didn’t know $24 million I picked up was from cartels

Sui Yuet Kong got 40 months in prison for her role in a Chinese operation moving U.S. drug proceeds to China, then to the Mexican cartels that sold the drugs in Chicago and New York.

When she got busted after picking up $24 million in parking lots from strangers in Chicago and New York over more than a year, a Chinese immigrant involved in a money-laundering scheme told federal investigators she never suspected she was helping launder drug proceeds.

According to federal prosecutors in Chicago, though, Sui Yuet Kong was part of a “relatively small network of Chinese expatriate money brokers and couriers based in Mexico and the United States [who] have come to dominate international money-laundering markets” and launder drug money.

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