Tag Archives: mafia news

Blog, Criminal, Immigration, International, Legal News, Organized Crime, Supreme Court

Juan Orlando Hernández, Former President of Honduras, Indicted on Drug-Trafficking and Firearms Charges, Extradited to the United States from Honduras

Hernández Allegedly Partnered with Some of the Largest Cocaine Traffickers in the World to Transport Tons of Cocaine through Honduras to the United States

Juan Orlando Hernández, aka JOH, 53, the former President of Honduras, will make his initial appearance tomorrow, April 22, before Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron in federal court in New York after being extradited today from Honduras. A federal court unsealed drug-trafficking and weapons charges today in a superseding indictment against Hernández.

The indictment charges that from at least in or about 2004, up to and including in or about 2022, Hernández, the former two-term President of Honduras, participated in a corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States. Hernández allegedly received millions of dollars to use his public office, law enforcement, and the military to support drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere.

“The Justice Department is taking a comprehensive approach to protecting our communities and our country from violent crime,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Department is committed to disrupting the entire ecosystem of drug trafficking networks that harm the American people, no matter how far or how high we must go.”

“Juan Orlando Hernández, the recent former President of Honduras, allegedly partnered with some of the world’s most prolific narcotics traffickers to build a corrupt and brutally violent empire based on the illegal trafficking of tons of cocaine to the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “Hernández is alleged to have used his vast political powers to protect and assist drug traffickers and cartel leaders by alerting them to possible interdictions, and sanctioning heavily armed violence to support their drug trade. I commend the career prosecutors of the Southern District of New York for their tireless efforts to disrupt the entire illicit drug trafficking ecosystem, from street-level dealers to a former world leader, and everything in-between.”

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

All 19 Ways The New York Mafia Makes Money | How Crime Works

Former New York Mafia made member John Pennisi speaks to Insider about all the ways the mob make their money. John Pennisi was born and raised in an Italian New York neighborhood where the mob had huge influence. He became a made member of the Lucchese crime family in 2013. Pennisi says he decided to leave the mob in 2018 after members of his crew falsely accused him of cooperating with law enforcement. Since leaving the mob, Pennisi has been writing blogs on sitdownnews.com and producing a podcast covering topics of organized crime on

Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

For decades a ruthless mafia has ruled in southern Italy. Now the state is fighting back

From the windows of Vittoria Sicari’s top-floor apartment in Vibo Marina, a village on the southern Italian coast, you can see the blue expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea stretching out to the horizon. It’s a view Vittoria hasn’t seen in 23 years. Back then, she claims, her apartment was stolen.

According to Vittoria, in the late 90s, as she was getting ready to sell the property, a man attended the open house inspection. When he put in an offer, all the other buyers suddenly lost interest. It was the first hint of trouble ahead. But sensing her chance to make a quick sale, she accepted a holding deposit and agreed to hand over a set of keys so he could go inside to measure up.

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Blog, Criminal, Legal News, Organized Crime

Convicted hit man’s escape evokes mob’s ‘ruthless’ heyday in one American city

(CNN)Dominic Taddeo was in his early 20s when a US Justice Department lawyer appeared before a Senate subcommittee with a dire warning about the future mafia hit man’s hometown.”Rochester, the home of Kodak, Xerox, and other thriving corporations … is a wealthy city, a ripe plum ready to be plucked by the strongest and most ruthless mob,” Gregory Baldwin, an attorney with the department’s organized crime and racketeering section, said during the 1980 hearing.

In the upstate New York city, the mob was known for detonating homemade bombs by remote control under the cars of rivals, according to Baldwin’s testimony and news reports.But Taddeo plied his deadly trade in the 1980s with a more conventional weapon — a .22-caliber pistol.A man who federal officials say began a life of crime at the age of 16, Taddeo, 64, was a largely forgotten crime figure until his March 28 escape — less than a year before his likely release — from a Florida halfway house while on a medical appointment.

His short-lived breakout took mob observers back to the heyday of La Cosa Nostra in the Lake Ontario city of about 200,000 — where the tragicomedy antics of rival factions at times evoked the third-rate mobsters in Jimmy’s Breslin’s novel “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Criminal Record: Vladimir Putin’s relationship with the Russian mafia

While the criminal underworld is thriving in Europe nobody really paid much attention as the “Bratva” – various organised crime groups who originated in the former Soviet Union – rose to become the largest in the world.

When Vladimir Putin appeared on television surrounded by his silent stony-faced generals as he threatened to unleash terror on Ukraine I was reminded of a quote by Bill Browder – an anti-corruption campaigner and financier.

“Imagine that Russia is like The Sopranos. In The Sopranos you had the Philadelphia mafia, the New Jersey mafia, the Manhattan mafia and the Brooklyn mafia and then you had the head capo who is above all of them. Vladimir Putin is the head capo.”

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