Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros began life as a pickpocket in his hometown of Tegucigalpa, before heading out on the perilous border roads of Latin America as an emerald smuggler. Soon he was making friends in high places, scoring deals on consignments of cocaine - and connecting coca producers in the Andes with up-and-coming narcos in Mexico.
All the while, Matta forged ties with the elites and corrupt soldiers who’d run Honduras for a century, capturing the small state and ensuring its future as a coup-happy transshipment point for years to come. But when Matta took part in the narco world’s most notorious murder, in 1985, his world came crashing down.
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1:01:46
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1:01:46
The State Line Mob: Redneck Mafia
Along the blood-soaked border between Mississippi and Tennessee, a ruthless crime empire ruled the night where whiskey flowed, dice rolled, and anyone who crossed the wrong person disappeared into the darkness. The State Line Mob, bankrolled by a hammer-wielding madam and led by a wannabe southern Capone, turned a stretch of highway into America's most lawless strip, where corrupt cops looked the other way and violence was the only language spoken.
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58:22
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The Cartel World's Donnie Brasco w/ Ian Frisch
Starting at the tail end of the wild cowboy days of 1980's Miami, undercover FBI agent Martin Suarez didn’t just infiltrate a cartel...he nearly rose to the top. As a smuggler, he helped move a billion dollars worth of product while rising through the ranks of the Medellin cartel before moving into the secretive world of elite money launderers for cocaine kingpins.
For years, he lived a double life inside the most dangerous syndicates, surviving hits, betrayals, and near-death missions. And he did it all longer than any agent ever had before...or since. He's the narco world's Donnie Brasco.
Journalist Ian Frisch, who co-wrote Suarez's story with him in the newly released Inside the Cartel, joins us for this episode.
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1:19:23
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1:19:23
Warlords, Narco-Pirates, & The Gangster King of Vietnam
Emerging from Saigon’s system of warlords and narco-pirates, Nam Cam built a criminal empire by making sure everyone — cops, politicians, media — was in his pocket. But that meant that when everything came crashing down, it crashed down hard, and he took out a decent portion of the city’s leadership with him.
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The OG Mexican Narco: Pablo Acosta
Pablo Acosta ruled Mexico's drug trade from a dusty border town, turning Ojinaga into a narco-empire that funneled billions in cocaine, weed and heroin into America during the 1980s. Known as the Fox of Ojinaga, he was a ruthless trafficker who taught the narco-world that it was better to buy the authorities than fight them.
His dealings with the Colombian cartels changed the Mexican underworld as we know it...until a coke problem and a bloody FBI-backed raid in 1987 turned a remote Mexican village into a war zone. This is the story of the man who pioneered the border drug corridor, leaving a legacy that still shapes the cartel wars today.
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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.
Ireland