Rainer Sonntag was just your run-of-the-mill, anti-state East German petty criminal—until a black ops team headed by then-KGB agent Vladimir Putin helped turn him into one of Europe's leading neo-Nazi leaders. When the Berlin Wall fell, Putin fled to Saint Petersburg and Sonntag returned to his hometown of Dresden. There he led a gang of skinhead thugs to shake down and beat up foreigners. But when he targeted a downtown brothel, things got bloody real quick. Then he and Putin's legacies really began. Read more about Putin, Sonntag and their violent rises to power in Sean's story for The Atavist, "Follow the Leader" - https://magazine.atavist.com/follow-the-leader-nazi-putin-sonntag-cold-war/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vladimir Putin, the KGB and the German Nazi Gangster Who Was a Communist Spy

Underworld exposes the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run. Journalists Danny Gold and Sean Williams bring their experience reporting on dangerous people and organizations to take listeners on a global tour of mobsters, warlords and crooks - from Brooklyn to Beijing, from the streets to the boardrooms - and everywhere in between. Underworld is a show about heroes, villains, and the barely visible mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Documentary

True crime

In the late 2000's, the Mexico government put together a list of dozens of Narco kingpins it wanted to bring down. Only one name from that list is not imprisoned or dead, and still sitting stop the Mexican cartel world: El Mayo. Nearing 80, he's never so much as been arrested despite co-founding and then co-leading the Sinaloa cartel for decades.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

El Mayo: The Undisputed King of Mexico & the Betrayal of El Chapo

Everyone knows El Chapo, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one time most powerful kingpin that Mexico has ever seen. The man who revolutionized the Mexican cartels' drug trade. But...what if he never actually was at the top of the food chain?
Some have long suspected that the head of the Sinaloa cartel has always been Ismael Zambada Garcia, also known as El Mayo. Nearing his 80's, little is known about his early life, but he's always managed to stay two steps ahead of the cartel wars and the police. He's never been arrested. He's always played the background, avoiding the spotlight and letting Chapo get the notoriety even though they cofounded and shared leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

El Chapo's Boss & The Most Powerful Kingpin in Mexico: El Mayo

With influencer and living meme Andrew Tate about to face trial in Romania, we dive into his connections to a powerful pair of Mafia brothers and their casino empire—and how the Tates pivoted from MMA to a gang that has terrorized the European nation for years.
We also go deep on the history of Romanian organized crime, from Ponzi schemes to ATM skimming gangs and Europe’s biggest human trafficking syndicate—and show how Romania and the Tates had been on a criminal collision course for decades
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Tate & the Romanian Mob: A Match Made in Criminal Heaven

Boris Nayfeld's life is like something out of a movie; orphaned in the former Soviet Union, he served time in a brutal penal colony before establishing himself as a top tier street criminal before escaping for America. No stranger to violence, he got involved in the burgeoning Russian mafia factions rising up in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach during the 1980's.
But he’s way more than just a two bit gangster. He’s been involved in organized crime from Odessa to Thailand to Antwerp, survived 5 assassination attempts, done prison in the US and the former soviet union, and been involved in diamond heists, heroin trafficking, extortion, shootouts, tangled with Russian Thieves in Law…the guy’s name carries weight. And somehow, through it all, he survived when nearly everyone else he came up with didn't.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Most Dangerous Russian Mobster America Has Ever Known: Boris Nayfeld

Lo Hsing Han was a Burmese narco so powerful that Richard Nixon called him a Godfather. But the Kokang king tried one too many shady deals, sending the Golden Triangle’s heroin industry on a helter-skelter path toward a bloody, 2023 shootout with Chinese cops—at a lawless casino town on the edge of nowhere.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vladimir Putin, the KGB and the German Nazi Gangster Who Was a Communist Spy

Download our free app to listen on your phone