The Chicago Syndicate
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Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Emma Coronel Aispuro, Wife of Notorious Former Drug Lord Joaquin Guzman "El Chapo", expected to Plead Guilty to helping #ELChapo run his Multi-billion Dollar Drug Empire

The wife of notorious Mexican drug kingpin "El Chapo" is expected to plead guilty this week to charges stemming from her alleged assistance in helping him run his multi-billion dollar empire, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News Investigative Unit senior producer Pat Milton.

Her anticipated plea was first reported by The New York Times, which also cites a person familiar with the matter. It was also confirmed by Agence France-Presse.

The Times says she'll also plead guilty to helping him escape from a high-security Mexican prison after one of his arrests. The newspaper says Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, is expected to enter her plea on Thursday in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C.

Aispuro was arrested by U.S. authorities at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in February on suspicion of aiding her husband's drug trafficking business. The former beauty queen was slapped with one charge of conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana for importation into the United States.

A guilty plea could help reduce her sentence.

Joaquin Guzman was the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico's most notorious drug trafficking groups. He ran an operation that delivered hundreds of tons of narcotics into the United States and was behind multiple murders of those who crossed him, according to court filings. He was extradited to the United States in 2017 to stand trial and convicted and sentenced to life in prison two years later.

Coronel, according to the Justice Department, took part in cartel activities and also allegedly assisted in two plots to help Guzman escape from Mexican prison, including the successful first one in 2015. Guzman is now in the highest-security prison in the United States, the ADX federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

A dual US-Mexico citizen and the mother of twins by Guzman, Coronel, 32 years younger than her husband, appeared in court nearly every day of his three-month trial in New York. She had been barred from all contact with him during more than two years of pre-trial detention. But during the trial, each day as he entered and left the courtroom, Guzman touched his heart and blew her a kiss. During the trial, there were suggestions that she was involved in his business and prison escape, but authorities let her come and go freely.

Monday, June 07, 2021

Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime

Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime, Second Edition, describes and analyzes a rapidly expanding global problem: criminal acts committed by motorcycle gangs. Thomas Barker, one of the world's top experts on outlaw biker gangs, offers fascinating details about the Bandidos, the Vagos, the Mongols, and other "one percenters" (criminal biker gangs, as opposed to the vast majority of motorcycle enthusiasts). He combines this data with a strengthened conceptual framework that makes sense of this complicated picture. U.S.-based motorcycle gangs like the Hells Angels have proliferated, especially in Canada and Europe, to the point where these gangs have more members in other countries than in the United States. More and more often in recent years their crimes are not limited to rumbles or drug use-these gangs challenge the dominance of organized crime, leading to violent conflicts between the rivals. Germany, Scandinavia, the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada are particularly hard-hit by this rising violence.

One of Barker's unique contributions is his Criminal Organization Continuum, building on the groundbreaking Network Approach to organized crime proposed by Klaus von Lampe. Introduced in the first edition, Barker elaborates his continuum tool and makes it more multi-dimensional to help refine the definition of adult criminal gangs. The product of years of research, Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime, Second Edition, lays the groundwork for further study by offering students, police, and researchers the most thorough account available of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

  • Delves into the secretive culture of each of the major outlaw motorcycle gangs from the Warlocks to the Sons of Silence 
  • Analyzes whether biker gangs are really an organized crime threat nationally and transnationally
  • Debunks the major myths surrounding outlaw motorcycle clubs/gangs



Wednesday, June 02, 2021

Killing the Mob: The Fight Against Organized Crime in America by the Award Winning @BillOReilly

Killing the Mob: The Fight Against Organized Crime in America, is the tenth book in Bill O'Reilly's #1 New York Times bestselling series of popular narrative histories, with sales of nearly 18 million copies worldwide, and over 320 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Instant #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller!

In the tenth book in the multimillion-selling Killing series, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard take on their most controversial subject yet: The Mob.


O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard trace the brutal history of 20th Century organized crime in the United States, and expertly plumb the history of this nation’s most notorious serial robbers, conmen, murderers, and especially, mob family bosses. Covering the period from the 1930s to the 1980s, O’Reilly and Dugard trace the prohibition-busting bank robbers of the Depression Era, such as John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby-Face Nelson. In addition, the authors highlight the creation of the Mafia Commission, the power struggles within the “Five Families,” the growth of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the mob battles to control Cuba, Las Vegas and Hollywood, as well as the personal war between the U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and legendary Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

O’Reilly and Dugard turn these legendary criminals and their true-life escapades into a read that rivals the most riveting crime novel. With Killing the Mob, their hit series is primed for its greatest success yet.


Tuesday, June 01, 2021

Is the Trump Organization a Mafia Family? #RICO #OrganizedCrime #Trump

Prosecutors appear to be treating their investigation of former President Donald Trump's business empire as if it were a mafia family, according to several reports out this week.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is likely considering criminal charges centered around the idea that the Trump Organization is a "corrupt enterprise" under a New York state racketeering statute resembling the federal RICO law — an abbreviation for the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was passed in 1970 to crack down on pervasive organized crime — several legal experts and former prosecutors told Politico.

"No self-respecting state white-collar prosecutor would forgo considering the enterprise corruption charge," longtime New York City defense attorney Robert Anello said. "I'm sure they're thinking about that."

The law, known colloquially as "little RICO," kicks in if prosecutors can establish that an organization or business has committed at least three separate crimes — a "pattern of criminal behavior," in legal parlance. A sentence under the statute can result in up to 25 years in prison — with a mandatory minimum of one year.

Vance has even hired a veteran mob prosecutor and expert in white-collar crime, Mark Pomerantz, to bolster his team, the New York Times reported in February.

Trump himself has a long history with several prominent New York City mob families — building his signature Trump Tower in Manhattan with help from a concrete company run by Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Paul Castellano, who at the time were bosses of the Genovese and Gambino families, Business Insider reported.

And just like in the investigations that put Salerno and Castellano behind bars, it appears prosecutors are hoping to rely on the testimony of "family" members like Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg, one of the company's longest-tenured employees. His former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, is cooperating with Vance's investigation and says she believes her ex-husband's father will flip on Trump due to his age and aversion to spending any time in prison.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who recently agreed to join forces with Vance on her separate investigation of Trump's business dealings, has also forced Trump's son, Eric, to sit for a deposition interview, according to the New York Times. But the decision to pursue racketeering charges carries its own risks, and many legal experts say prosecutors are better off seeking straightforward indictments on specific crimes that are easier to litigate.

"Why overcharge and complicate something that could be fairly simple?" Jeremy Saland, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA's office, told Politico. "Why muddy up the water? Why give a defense attorney something that could confuse a jury and be able to crow that they beat a charge in a motion to dismiss?"

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and blasted the investigations as politically inspired "witch hunts."

Thanks to Brett Bachman.

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

The Bomber Mafia by @Gladwell #TheBomberMafia

In The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?

In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?”

Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.


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