The Underworld Podcast

In a city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, a young man rose through the ranks of a violent paramilitary organization to become one of its key leaders. But that wasn’t all. Throughout, he posted his criminal exploits to social media, crafting a Robin Hood image while robbing, dealing and killing the very people he claimed to help. When the young man, going by the name of ‘Bendito Menor’, or ‘Little Blessing’, began taunting Colombia’s new tough guy president, folks began lauding him for showing the state who was really boss in Colombia’s remote north. But there was one wrinkle in the plan: the president was a chronic poster too, and no stranger to the narco world. The two men were headed for a bloody showdown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It's also home to one of the most violent and tangled criminal underworlds on the planet, where drug lords, prison gangs, crooked cops, and millionaire businessmen wage bloody wars over everything from nightclub security to anabolic steroids. When South Africa's notorious "Steroid King," Brian Weinstein, is executed in his bed in 2017, the murder exposes a sprawling network of gangsters battling for control of the city. But the story only gets stranger as the men accused of arranging the hit start turning up dead themselves. This week, Danny and Sean dive into Cape Town's astonishing mafia wars, tracing decades of corruption, gang violence, international crime syndicates, and spectacular assassinations. And this is only Part One. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Cuba is Slipping into Drug Chaos Since the beginning of the year, the US has placed Cuba under an oil embargo, crippling its public services and throwing a society that was already on its knees into chaos. Blackouts roll for days, trash piles high and locals are getting sick from a smorgasbord of airborne diseases. Cuba has survived similar crises before: in the mid-1990s its people endured a calamity that wiped 90 percent off the economy. But today is different. And amid the madness, a new scourge has appeared on Cuba’s streets, a synthetic drug the locals call ‘quimico’. And as gangs coalesce to sell it, our correspondent got caught up in Cuba’s new street violence himself. Music licensed through Soundstripe.Code: 63IWXYBOI48IZKBY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sean got beaten up in Cuba! To celebrate this, we’ve thrown together a biopoly of crime in the tropics, beginning with the story of how American organized crime flocked to Havana in the 1920s as a Prohibition rum-runner’s paradise. After World War II, mobsters then executed a takeover of Havana, building hotels, casinos, racetracks and bordellos as US tourism sought sun, sand, and vice off the Florida Strait. Chief among all Havana’s crooks were Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, who in 1946 welcomed the great and good of America’s underworld to a ‘Mob Conference’ that would decide the fate of a new, offshore Mafia. But trouble was brewing—mainly in the form of a young, bearded nationalist who’d practiced his own violent form of ‘gangsterismo’ in the past. And as Havana’s criminal-friendly dictatorship buckled, the island was about to face a new anti-Mafia crusade, Fidel Castro-style. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny and Sean take another lap around the criminal world, where somehow everything is getting bigger, stranger, and more international. Sinaloa’s cartel war grinds on, Romanian crews allegedly drain millions from American food-benefit accounts, and South Africa confronts organized crime increasingly tangled up with the state. Elsewhere, Sydney’s latest gang war features teenage recruits and drone-assisted hits, Belgian investigators finally wrap a massive cocaine case, and Spanish cops try to catch narco speedboats that are literally faster than theirs. There are also fresh Kinahan developments, a gang threatening to “rule” Canada, and an alleged arms dealer accused of supplying both sides of Brazil’s deadliest gang war. Some music licensed through Soundstripe.Code: 1VDUSIE5HAQQOMKK, ICXE0MTBHKMQDI84 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices