The Underworld Podcast

Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow possesses one of the best mob nicknames out there. The San Francisco Chinatown gangster went from teenage immigrant hooligan from the streets of Hong Kong to one of the most infamous Asian organized crime figures in America. His story has everything: Chinatown tongs, Hong Kong triad influence, immigrant protection rackets, gambling dens, and the violent gang wars that turned San Francisco’s streets into a battleground. Then comes Shrimp Boy’s strange second act, when he reemerges from prison claiming to be a reformed community leader, even as the FBI is building a sprawling undercover case around him. It all ends in a wild corruption and organized crime scandal involving guns, money laundering, murder allegations, and a California state senator caught in the same net.

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Ibrahim Akasha was the kingpin of East Africa’s heroin highway, setting up a massive tracking empire that stretched from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to Kenya, South Africa and Europe.

When he was gunned down in 2000, his sons stepped into the void, hungrier and even more violent...but also, more sloppy. They struck deals with Pakistani mobsters and Colombian cartels, turning Kenya’s ports into gateways for global dope. But their empire crumbled in a DEA sting straight out of a Hollywood script.

*Note: Sean disappeared while on vacation in Amsterdam, Danny had to be hospitalized post Knicks win, so we took a week off for the first time in a year. Enjoy this classic episode from last summer:

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When Mako Nishimura, the yakuza’s only female member, fell in love with a rival gangster, it would send her on a long and painful path from drug and sex trafficking, to painkiller addiction and finally a role helping ex-yakuza go straight.

Her journey would mirror the downfall of the yakuza at-large, from the world’s largest criminal gangs to social outcasts, outwitted by cops and outpaced by new, digital criminals taking over the Japanese underworld.
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On this week's Stash House: A fugitive Dutch cocaine kingpin dodges capture off the coast of West Africa. An Irish gang boss trades gangland warfare for electoral politics. Mexican officials accused of working for the Sinaloa Cartel surrender to U.S. authorities. A violent mafia feud erupts in southern Italy. Nigerian authorities uncover an industrial-scale meth lab allegedly linked to Mexican cartel cooks. And with the World Cup approaching, Mexico’s cartels reportedly decide that protecting tourists is simply good business.

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Mako Nishimura graduated from high school delinquent to kamikaze biker gang, street tough and, eventually, a fully made member of a yakuza syndicate - the first (or perhaps second?) woman to do so. Nishimura made her gang huge amounts of cash selling women plus selling, and taking, huge quantities of methamphetamines.

But by the end of the 1980s, Nishimura’s life was unraveling into a mess of addiction, violence and madness. When Japan’s economic bubble burst at the end of the decade, the yakuza would be staring at a long and painful decline. And Nishimura had bigger problems: she’d fallen in love.
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