The infiltration of organised crime in the legitimate economy has emerged as a transnational phenomenon. This book constitutes an unprecedented study of the involvement of criminal groups in the legitimate economy and their infiltration in legal businesses, and is the first to bridge the research gap between money laundering and organised crime. It analyses the main drivers of this process, explaining why, how and where infiltration happens. Building on empirical evidence from the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Ireland, Italy, France and Finland, Organised Crime in European Businesses is divided into four parts. Part I explores the infiltration of legitimate businesses to conceal and facilitate illicit trafficking. Part II examines the infiltration of legitimate businesses to develop fraud schemes. Part III focuses on the infiltration of legitimate businesses to control the territory and influence policy makers. Part IV concludes by considering the research and policy implications in light of these findings. Bringing together leading experts and detailed case studies, this book considers the infiltration of organised crime in legitimate business around Europe. It is an ideal resource for students and academics in the fields of criminology, economics and sociology, as well as private sector practitioners, public officials and policy makers.

More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire twentieth century. He profiles some of its most infamous characters, such as Owney Madden, Frankie Carbo, and Frank Palermo, and details many of the fixed matches in boxing's storied history. In addition, Sussman examines the influence of the mob on legendary boxers-including Primo Carnera, Sugar Ray Robinson, Max Baer, Carmen Basilio, Sonny Liston, and Jake LaMotta-and whether they caved to the mobsters' threats or refused to throw their fights. Boxing and the Mob is the first book to cover a century of fixed fights, paid-off referees, greedy managers, misused boxers, and the mobsters who controlled it all. True crime and the world of boxing are intertwined with absorbing detail in this notorious piece of American history.

"This is a book I wish I'd written. It's brilliantly researched, full of detail and illuminating..." --Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Ice Uncover the shocking world of the Japanese courtroom. In a country where nearly all defendants plead guilty, the interesting part is what happens between the plea and the sentencing. In True Crime Japan, journalist and longtime resident of Japan Paul Murphy delves into a year's worth of criminal court cases in Matsumoto, a city located 140 miles to the west of Tokyo. The nine defendants in these cases range from ruthless mobsters to average citizens with a variety of methods and motives. Using court documents and interviews, Murphy makes a point of including the perspectives of the defendants, as well as those of their families, neighbors, and lawyers. He explores not only the motives of offenders but the culture of crime and punishment in Japan. The nine cases include: "Late in Life" -- A wealthy octogenarian is put in jail for stealing fried chicken "Mama's Boys" -- A disbelieving family unveils their son's role as a yakuza gangster. "Mother Killers" -- A middle-aged carpenter beats his 91-year old mother to death and goes to work the following day, leaving the body for his wife to find. True Crime Japan provides an unusual lens through which to view Japanese society and its emphasis on honor, shame, and conformity. Murphy's in-depth analysis of the court system reveals Japan to be, perhaps surprisingly, a land of true individuals.

The killing took place outside a busy coffee bar in Naples in broad daylight. Pupetta was eighteen years old and six months pregnant when she pulled the gun from her bag. The victim? A man known as Big Tony who had ordered the hit on her husband just months earlier... In this unputdownable expose of women in the Mafia, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau tells the stories of the women who have risen to prominence in the Italian mob, beginning with the first documented female boss, the infamous Pupetta Maresca. Through personal interviews and groundbreaking research, Nadeau gives us a jaw-dropping 360-degree view of the dark underbelly of Italian society, taking us deeper into the Mafia and its complex realities than ever before. 'Takes the reader into the little-known role of the women that underpin Italy's most ruthless mob families' Sara Gay Forden, author of House of Gucci 'An unflinching portrait of one the original divas of organised crime' Clare Longrigg, author of Mafia Women 'A must for true-crime fans' Publishers Weekly

Digital Pirates examines the unauthorized creation, distribution, and consumption of movies and music in Brazil. Alexander Sebastian Dent offers a new definition of piracy as indispensable to current capitalism alongside increasing global enforcement of intellectual property (IP). Complex and capricious laws might prohibit it, but piracy remains a core activity of the twenty-first century. Combining the tools of linguistic and cultural anthropology with models from media studies and political economy, Digital Pirates reveals how the dynamics of IP and piracy serve as strategies for managing the gaps between texts-in this case, digital content. Dent's analysis includes his fieldwork in and around Sao Paulo with pirates, musicians, filmmakers, police, salesmen, technicians, policymakers, politicians, activists, and consumers. Rather than argue for rigid positions, he suggests that Brazilians are pulled in multiple directions according to the injunctions of international governance, localized pleasure, magical consumption, and economic efficiency. Through its novel theorization of "digital textuality," this book offers crucial insights into the qualities of today's mediascape as well as the particularized political and cultural norms that govern it. The book also shows how twenty-first century capitalism generates piracy and its enforcement simultaneously, while producing fraught consumer experiences in Latin America and beyond.

Digital Pirates examines the unauthorized creation, distribution, and consumption of movies and music in Brazil. Alexander Sebastian Dent offers a new definition of piracy as indispensable to current capitalism alongside increasing global enforcement of intellectual property (IP). Complex and capricious laws might prohibit it, but piracy remains a core activity of the twenty-first century. Combining the tools of linguistic and cultural anthropology with models from media studies and political economy, Digital Pirates reveals how the dynamics of IP and piracy serve as strategies for managing the gaps between texts-in this case, digital content. Dent's analysis includes his fieldwork in and around Sao Paulo with pirates, musicians, filmmakers, police, salesmen, technicians, policymakers, politicians, activists, and consumers. Rather than argue for rigid positions, he suggests that Brazilians are pulled in multiple directions according to the injunctions of international governance, localized pleasure, magical consumption, and economic efficiency. Through its novel theorization of "digital textuality," this book offers crucial insights into the qualities of today's mediascape as well as the particularized political and cultural norms that govern it. The book also shows how twenty-first century capitalism generates piracy and its enforcement simultaneously, while producing fraught consumer experiences in Latin America and beyond.

Few subjects elicit greater moral outrage than human trafficking. Media reports of dehumanizing practices such as slavery, abduction, child prostitution, and torture, along with shocking statistics, form the basis of public knowledge.

With sensitivity and candor, this book addresses the reality of human trafficking in Thailand, dissecting studies, presenting facts, and dismissing stereotypes. It focuses on the areas of fishing, agriculture, domestic work, sex work, and the trafficking of children, weaving individual narratives and official studies into the wider history of Thailand's changing economy and labor situation.

Sirok Sorajjakool is professor of religion, psychology, and counseling at Loma Linda University, California.

Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey explores the history of organized crime in Turkey and the roles which gangs and gangsters have played in the making of the Turkish state and Turkish politics. Turkey's underworld, which has been at the heart of several devastating scandals over the last several decades, is strongly tied to the country's long history of opium production and heroin trafficking. As an industry at the centre of the Ottoman Empire's long transition into the modern Turkish Republic, as important as the silk road had been in earlier centuries, the modern rise of the opium and heroin trade helped to solidify and complicate long-standing relationships between state officials and criminal syndicates. Such relationships produced not only ongoing patterns of corruption, but helped fuel and enable repeated acts of state violence. Drawing upon new archival sources from the United States and Turkey, including declassified documents from the Prime Minister's Archives of the Republic of Turkey and the Central Intelligence Agency, Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey provides a critical window into how a handful of criminal syndicates played supporting roles in the making of national security politics in the contemporary Turkey. The rise of the 'Turkish mafia', from its origins in the late Ottoman period to its role in the 'deep state' revealed by the so-called Susurluk and Ergenekon scandals, is a story that mirrors troubling elements in the republic's establishment and emphasizes the transnational and comparative significance of narcotics and gangs in the country's past.

Gang violence is on the increase in certain neighbourhoods. There is an urgent need for a fresh perspective that offers insight into gang structure, organisation and offending behaviour to explain this increase. Using the findings from an extensive ethnographic study of local residents, professionals and gang members in south London, and drawing on his vast experience and knowledge of the field, Simon Harding proposes a unique theoretical perspective on survival in violent street gangs. He applies Bourdieu's principles of social field analysis and habitus to gangs, establishing them as a social arena of competition where actors struggle for distinction and survival, striving to become 'players in the game' in the 'casino of life'. Success is determined by accruing and retaining playing chips - street capital. Harding's dramatic and compelling insights depict gang life as one of constant flux, where players jostle for position, reputation, status and distinction. This perspective offers new evidence to the field that will help academics, students, practitioners and policy makers to understand the dynamics of gang behaviour and the associated risks of violence and offending. Simon Harding is currently a senior lecturer in criminology at Middlesex University, UK. He draws on 25 years of experience in research, public policy and project delivery as a crime reduction and community safety practitioner.

Fear is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodriguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorised and controlled what was once Miriam's quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the US border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own revenge.

Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she began a crusade to track down Karen's killers and help other victimised families.

What can a person do when their country and the town where they have grown up become unrecognisable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed tells the mesmerising story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces drive people to seek justice on their own.

Long recognised as a site where criminal elements have flourished, the waterfront has been exploited for centuries by opportunistic individuals for a whole raft of illicit purposes. Policing the Waterfront: Networks, Partnerships, and the Governance of Port Security is the first book of its kind to fully explore the intricacies of how crime is controlled on the waterfront, and in doing so, seeks to enhance current theoretical understandings of the policing partnerships that exist between state and non-state actors. Charting the complex configuration of security networks using a range of analytical techniques, this book presents new empirical data, which exposes and explains the social structures that enable policing partnerships to function on the waterfront. Particularly striking is the use of enhanced and adjusted theoretical discussions, to both shape and develop previous policing and security debates - resulting in a work that is both innovative and, yet, still routed in the traditions of empirical research. The analysis is achieved through a comparative research design, evaluating the narratives of both state and non-state security providers at the busiest ports in America and Australia: the Los Angeles/Long Beach Port Complex and the Port of Melbourne. Policing the Waterfront presents a rich and highly original account of the underlying structures that foster, facilitate, and enhance policing partnerships on the waterfront, and will be of interest to scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, law, socio-legal and policy studies, as well as those researching and studying policing, regulation, security, mass transportation, and social capital.

In 1978, the US government waged a war against organised crime. One man was left behind the lines. From 1976 until 1981, Special Agent Pistone lived undercover with the Mafia. Only able to visit his young family once every few months, Pistone - under the alias Donnie Brasco - ate, drank, partied, worked and sometimes killed with the wiseguys. He got so close that his Mafia partner, Lefty Ruggiero, asked him to officiate as best man at his wedding. Pistone's eventual testimony, in such spectacular prosecutions as 'the Pizza Connection' and 'the Mafia Commission' resulted in more than 200 indictments and 100 convictions of members of organised crime.

'How did a kid from the country who dreamed of joining the Victoria Police, end up on the wrong side of the bars? There are a lot of reasons, and I hope this story will help clarify some of them, not only for you, the reader, but for me too, because a lot of the time I am left shaking my head, wondering how things went so wrong.' Paul Dale knows he is tainted. After almost fifteen years as a cop, working in Homicide and rising to the rank of Detective Sergeant in the Victorian Drug Squad, he saw the worst of what people can do. But when he was accused and jailed firstly for drug offences and then for murder, Dale realised the murky world he was navigating was going to take him under too. Dale dealt with crims like Carl Williams, Terry Hodson and Tommy Ivanovic on the Melbourne streets. But when a burglary ended in Hodson's arrest, Dale's life started to unravel. He turned to Nicola Gobbo, a lawyer and friend he thought could help: the lawyer who became known as Lawyer X. Eventually exonerated of any crimes, Paul Dale's story reveals the shocking deals done at the highest levels of the Victorian Police Force and the damage wrought by Victoria Police's use of Lawyer X.

In the last two decades, organised crime has grown more complex, posing evolving challenges for U.S. federal law enforcement. These criminals have transformed their operations in ways that broaden their reach and make it harder for law enforcement to combat them. They have adopted more-networked structural models, internationalised their operations, and grown more tech savvy. They are a significant challenge to U.S. law enforcement. This book examines a broad conceptualisation of organised crime in its narrative discussion of criminal activity. The analysis includes groups engaged in sustained criminal enterprises, such as, but not limited to: drug traffickers, mafia families, smugglers, violent gangs, and fraudsters. These operations may or may not have a transnational dimension to them, but they directly impact U.S. persons, businesses, and/or interests.

When Debbie Calitz and her partner Bruno Pelizzari set sail from Dar es Salaam in October 2010, they could never have guessed that they would be making a voyage into the depths of hell.

Three days into their journey as crew on board the yacht Choizel, it was captured by Somali pirates who held Debbie and Bruno for ransom. For twenty months the pair was made to live in dark rooms while they were moved countless times between different locations and captors who subjected them – but especially Debbie – to untold horrors. Yet Debbie’s spiritual awareness, her sense of humanity and, ironically, her past history of being the victim of abuse, helped her to stay alive as she remained positive in the belief that she and Bruno would be rescued.

In this compelling book right from the depths of depravity Debbie Calitz reveals the details of their ordeal and their eventual rescue. It is a story of overwhelming courage from a woman who overcame all odds when freedom and dignity were a distant memory.

An in-depth study of the U.S. v. the International Brotherhood of Teamsters In 1988, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani brought a massive civil racketeering suit against the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), at the time possibly the most corrupt union in the world. The lawsuit charged that the mafia had operated the IBT as a racketeering enterprise for decades, systematically violating the rights of members and furthering the interests of organized crime. On the eve of trial, the parties settled the case, and twenty years later, the trustees are still on the job. Breaking the Devil's Pact is an in-depth study of the U.S. v. IBT, beginning with Giuliani's lawsuit and the politics surrounding it, and continuing with an incisive analysis of the controversial nature of the ongoing trusteeship. James B. Jacobs and Kerry T. Cooperman address the larger question of the limits of legal reform in the American labor movement and the appropriate level of government involvement.

Known for their striking full-body tattoos and severed fingertips, Japan's gangsters comprise a criminal class eighty thousand strong - more than four times the size of the American mafia. Despite their criminal nature, the yakuza are accepted by fellow Japanese to a degree guaranteed to shock most Westerners. "Yakuza" is the first book to reveal the extraordinary reach of Japan's Mafia. Originally published in 1986, it was so controversial in Japan that it could not be published there for five years. But in the west it has long served as the standard reference on Japanese organized crime and has inspired novels, screenplays, and criminal investigations. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition tells the full story of Japan's remarkable crime syndicates, from their feudal start as bands of medieval outlaws to their emergence as billion-dollar investors in real estate, big business, art, and more.

In recent years, the south-western border of the United States has come under increasing pressure from the activities of Mexican narco-insurgents. These insurgents have developed rapidly from beginnings as nebulous gangs into networked cartels that have exposed the porosity of the border. These cartels declare no allegiance to any nation and are engaging in asymmetrical warfare against sovereign states throughout Mexico and in Central America. Within such states, de facto political control is shifting to the cartels in the 'areas of impunity' that have emerged. This book addresses these concerns and focuses on the criminal insurgencies being waged by the gangs and cartels. It is divided into sections on theory, Mexico, and the Americas and contains a number of introductory essays pertaining to this premier security threat to the United States and her allies in the region. Topics covered include criminal and spiritual insurgency, cartel weapons, corruption, feral cities, Los Zetas, politicized gangs, and threat analysis in Central America. This book will be a valuable resource to scholars in the fields of regional security, criminal justice and American Studies. It will be of great benefit to military and civil policymakers and practitioners in the areas of law enforcement and counternarcotics. This book was published as a special issue of Small Wars and Insurgencies.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the South Bronx had one of the highest per capita murder rates in America. As the use of crack cocaine surged, replacing heroin as the high of choice, dealers and gangs staked claims to territory and consumers through intimidation and murder, and families found themselves fractured by crime and incarceration. Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the most violent gangs of its era, in this engrossing work of gritty urban reportage, Jonathan Green offers a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough going down in flames, and of the detectives and prosecutors struggling to stem the tide of violence. Drawing on first-person interviews, police reports and court transcripts, Sex Money Murder, gives an extraordinary perspective on modern-day America.

*** THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER *** 'A brilliant historical crime read' Bella 'This thrilling and twisty crime novel is perfect for fans of Martina Cole' My Weekly 'A rollercoaster of crime, revenge and murder' The Sun BEHIND EVERY STRONG WOMAN IS AN EPIC STORY... In the early years of the last century, a desperate young girl changes her name and flees the confines of her brutal, dominating gangland family in London. Now calling herself 'Diamond Dupree', she goes to Paris to become an artist's model but the world there is different to what she had supposed it would be and she soon falls on hard times. When she manages to escape at the end of the First World War, she leaves behind her a mystery - and a dead man. Back home in London, she reluctantly re-joins the Soho family 'firm' she'd once been glad to leave behind. Having grown tougher during her time in Paris, she soon becomes a force to be reckoned with, a feared and respected gangland queen. But then she meets Richard Beaumont, the youngest son of a wealthy aristocratic family, and sparks fly. But can she escape the long arm of the law and the hangman's noose, when the crimes of her past finally catch up with her? For fans of Martina Cole and Kimberley Chambers, as well as viewers of Peaky Blinders, this is historical crime fiction at its most compelling. 'No one delves into the underworld like Keane!' Woman's Weekly 'A gritty and enlightening read' Yours 'Authentically gritty' Crime Monthly

A biography of the spectacular rise and fall of Eddie Antar, better known as "Crazy Eddie," whose home electronics empire changed the world even as it turned out to be one of the biggest business scams of all timeBack in the fall of 2016 we heard the news about the passing of Eddie Antar, "Crazy Eddie" as he was known to millions of people, the man behind the successful chain of electronic stores and one of the most iconic ad campaigns in history. Few things evoke the New York of a particular era the way "Crazy Eddie! His prices are insaaaaane!" does. The journalist Herb Greenberg called his death the "end of an era" and that couldn't be more true. What's insane is that his story has never been told.Before Enron, before Madoff, before The Wolf of Wall Street, Eddie Antar's corruption was second to none in the U.S.A. The difference was that it was a street franchise, a local place that was in the blood stream of everyone's daily life in the 1970s and early '80s. And Eddie pulled it off with a certain style, an in your face blue collar chutzpah. Despite the fact that then Attorney General Ron Chertoff called him "the Darth Vader of capitalism" after the extent of the fraud was revealed, one of the largest SEC frauds in American history after Crazy Eddie's stores went public in 1984, Eddie was talked about fondly by the people who worked for him. They still do-there are myriads of ex-Crazy Eddie employee web pages that still attract fans.Many years have passed since the franchise went down in spectacular fashion but Crazy Eddie's moment has endured the way that iconic brands and characters do--one only need Google the media outpouring that accompanied his death. Maybe it's because it crystallized everything about 1970s New York almost perfectly, the merchandise and rise of consumer electronics (stereos!), the ads (cheesy!), the money (cash!). In Retail Gangster, investigative journalist Gary Weiss takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most unbelievable business scam stories of all time, reaffirming the old adage that the truth is often stranger than fiction.

The unbelievable account of life as a hitman from a man who has been doing it for decades. Hitmen commit heinous crimes virtually every day of the week and, in most instances, we don't even realise. I've been a killer for hire for more than twenty years now, but life as a fulltime professional assassin has never been easy. There have been close calls, failed attempts and a lot of looking over my shoulder. And now, I've decided to come clean and seek atonement for my life as a murderer and one of the most covertly dangerous men alive. This is an account of a life lived between our world and a shadowy underworld of criminals... a life lived under the radar of the law... a life lived in death. This is the story of my life as a hitman.

Human trafficking is a crime that undermines fundamental human rights and a broader sense of global order. It is an atrocity that transcends borders-with some regions known as exporters of trafficking victims and others recognized as destination countries. Edited by three global experts and composed of the work of an esteemed panel of contributors, Human Trafficking: Exploring the International Nature, Concerns, and Complexities examines techniques used to protect and support victims of trafficking as well as strategies for prosecution of offenders. Topics discussed include: How data on human trafficking should be collected and analyzed, and how data collection can be improved through proper contextualization The importance of harmonization and consistency in legal definitions and interpretations within and among regions The need for increased exchange of information and cooperation between the various actors involved in combating human trafficking, including investigators, law enforcement and criminal justice professionals, and social workers Problems with victim identification, as well as erroneous assumptions of the scope of victimization Controversy over linking protection measures with cooperation with authorities Highlighting the issues most addressed by contemporary scholars, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, this volume also suggests areas ripe for further inquiry and investigation. Supplemented by discussion questions in each chapter, the book is sure to stimulate debate on a troubling phenomenon.