The Underworld Podcast

Latest Episodes:

From Fantasy Islands to a Coup D’État: The Dominion of Melchizedek: Nov 14, 2023

Show notes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fake country and a global scam operation, must be in want of a wife with a penny-stock mining operation who can stalk government officials in their dreams.

In the second instalment of our Dominion of Melchizedek two-parter, the conman mothership ventures out in search of a home; establishes diplomatic relations with fellow micronations; tries to rebuild the Queen Mary oceanliner; and endures a bitter power struggle. Oh, and its current PM spent two hours shooting the breeze with Sean.

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The Dominion of Melchizedek: The "Mothership for Con Artists Worldwide" Nov 07, 2023

Show notes

Back in the early 1980s David and Mark Pedley were little more than a father-son real estate scam duo. Then came prison, escape, and a self-penned Bible, named for an obscure Jerusalem priest and the foundation for a micronation called the Dominion of Melchizedek.

It was no ordinary secession movement. The Dominion would become one of its era's greatest swindles, taking in bogus firms, Vegas slots, Hong Kong archdukes and Idy Amin's mansion.

Then, with the backing of a mysterious Carpathian tribe, the Dominion of Melchizedek declared war on France. Part one of a frankly insane two-parter.

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The New Orleans Godfather and the JFK Assassination: Carlos Marcello Oct 31, 2023

Show notes

Carlos Marcello went from a small time produce hustler to heading up the New Orleans Mafia with a massive gambling empire and a hand in every pie in the city's notorious underworld. He even found himself in business with the heavyweights from New York's five families. And though he tried to keep himself out of the spotlight, the Kennedy brother's war on America's mafia, with John as president and Robert as attorney general, made sure the FBI knew he was and stayed on his case. In fact, RFK once had him kidnapped and deported to Guatemala and Marcello was overheard swearing to get revenge. But how far did he go? Could he have been involved in the assassination of a president? All that and the story of Sean's first arrest for public indecency on Bourbon Street.

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The Chechen Mafia Goes Global: Ramzan Kadyrov, Car Bombs, Guns-for-hire and The World's Weirdest Reality Show Oct 24, 2023

Show notes

The final show in our Chechen trilogy focuses on the republic's current gangster-in-chief, Ramzan Kadyrov, and his rise to become one of the world's most fearsome—but also bumbling—despots.

Kadyrov has cozied up to Vladimir Putin, dispatched hired killers to quell dissent, empowered Chechen mafiosi and even launched his own film studio to create a North Korea-style cult of personality in the Caucasian state. And of course, there's football, boxing with Mike Tyson and Kadyrov's successful forays into MMA.

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The Knife Fighting Italian Gangster Who Built an Army while in Prison Oct 17, 2023

Show notes

The Camorra clans of Naples had always played second fiddle to the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian 'Ndranghetta. Until Raffaelle Cutolo started building up his Nuovo Camorra Organization while locked up in a notorious prison. When he wasn't writing poetry or challenging other bosses to knife fights, his old school charisma and genius leadership skills, as well as his insanity, saw him take a small prison crew and build it into an army of thousands ready to die for him. Many of his soldiers would get that opportunity as he started a war trying to rule all of Naples, but it was his battles with the government that ended up really taking their toll.

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How Russian Mobsters Masterminded a Crazy, Fake Cricket League for Betting Riches: Sean's in the Field! Oct 10, 2023

Show notes

This May, on assignment for _Sports Illustrated_, Sean visited Molipur, a tiny village in Gujarat, India, to dive into what seemed like a funny caper: villagers establishing a fake cricket league to fool Russian punters.

But almost as soon as he stepped off the plane, the story took a sharp right turn. The Russians were pulling the villagers' strings all along. And the sportsbook behind it all is one of the slickest and maddest money-laundering schemes on the planet.

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The Secret Rise of Female Narcos in Latin American Cartels with Deborah Bonello Oct 03, 2023

Show notes

Deborah Bonello is a Mexico City-based reporter who's distilled years of reporting on some of the most dangerous women on earth into her new book "Narcas: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America's Cartels".

Deborah spoke to Sean about Lola "La Chata", the first female narco boss in Mexican history, the bathtub violence of Argentine smuggler Yolanda Sarmiento, women in El Salvador's brutal street gangs, and Emma Coronel, El Chapo's buchona wife.

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Ex-Con Mercenaries, Wagner, Prigozhin, and the Russian Mafiosos Fighting in Ukraine with Joshua Yaffa Sep 26, 2023

Show notes

The Russian mercenary/state aligned outfit Wagner emerged from the early days of the war in Ukraine, led by an ex-con turned hot dog salesman turned Putin lapdog. In no time, they were operating in the Middle East and Africa, and Yevgeny Prigozhin's stock as a warlord began to rise. When Russia's full scale invasion started to falter, Wagner started trawling Russian prisons like the villain in a Fast and Furious movie. Soon, though, his star rose a little too high and that never ends well in Putin's Russia. We're joined by New Yorker writer and Between Two Fires author Joshua Yaffa, who has covered Wagner's rise and Prigozhin's fall.

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The Chechen Mafia Strikes Back: War Profiteering, School Sieges and a Turncoat Named Kadyrov Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

The Soviet Union is toast, Chechnya is at war and Grozny, its embattled capital, is being bombed to dust. Gangs of Chechen criminals are getting rich off the bloodshed, capitalizing on gun- and drug-running networks that flourished under Communism.

When the war ends a new breed of Chechen mobster-terrorist emerges, empowered by Arab Jihad and financed by goons who've grown fat on the patronage of oligarchs. After a brutal period of rocket strikes, school sieges and plane hijackings, Chechnya enters a new, stable—but semi-feudal—stage, led by a family of boxers and religious zealots: the Kadyrovs.

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Becoming the Chechen Mafia: Ancient Outlaws, Soviet Scabs and a British KGB Plot Sep 12, 2023

Show notes

In this episode we track the concept of the Chechen Mafia—not an easy thing to define—from ancient invasions and the creation of the "Abrek", or "outlaw-exile," through Soviet repression, Stalin's deportations and the "Scab War" of the feared Gulag Archipelago.

The rise of a Communist blackmarket later allowed Chechens in Siberia and Kazakhstan to carve out their own illicit empires, outside of Russia's "Thieves World." These newfound gangsters coalesced with an independence movement, whose bloodshed would reach all the way to central London—at the scene of a brutal, 1993 double-murder.

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