Part 3 - "Wake Up! The Bandits Are Coming!" At the end of March this year, officers from the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) responded to a request for assistance when an armoured Haitian National Police vehicle became stuck in a ditch near Pont-Sondé in Artibonite. The ditch was believed to have been dug by a local gang. As the MSS officers arrived to help, they were ambushed by armed men, allegedly from the Gran Grif gang. During the firefight, three armoured vehicles w...
May 14, 2025•45 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Part 2 - 'Fighting Back' In 2022, a video emerged of an alleged senior gang member, Zo Pwason, who had been caught by an armed group of Haitian citizens, led by Commissioner Jean-Ernest Muscadin. Zo Pwason was allegedly a senior member of the 5 Segond gang. He was executed by the armed group. Muscadin declared that “As long as I am government commissioner, the city of Miragoâne will remain a cemetery for bandits”. In this episode we look at those citizens that have fought back against the growin...
Apr 30, 2025•56 min•Season 6Ep. 3
Part 1 - " The Death of a President " In July 2021, the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated as he slept at home by a band of mercenaries. His murder sparked a wave of violent protests and a period of unprecedented crisis in the small Caribbean nation that the country has still yet to address nearly four years later. For a long time, violent gangs were used by politicians to win elections, harass political opponents and stamp out opposition. But the political vacuum and ensuing ch...
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 6Ep. 2
If you were to walk around a Russian city, you might not realise it but hundreds of small packages of drugs, could be just below the surface, buried in the ground, or maybe attached to the back of a nearby drainpipe with magnets, or hidden inside a hole in a wall. These little "treasures" have been ordered online from a vendor operating on a darknet platform and then hidden by couriers known as 'Kladmen' all over the place waiting to be collected - this is the "dead drop" method. The darknet mar...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Buenaventura – “The Pact for Life” Buenaventura has long been an important node in international illicit markets, particularly cocaine trafficking due to its port. Gangs, paramilitaries and organized criminal networks have all looked to gain a foothold here. The resulting violence has meant the city has seen many murders, and even more disappearances, with terrifying tales emanating from the so-called 'Casa de pique’ (Chop Shops). In September 2022, two gangs in Buenaventura, on the Pacific coas...
Nov 27, 2024•45 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Colombia is a country that has been racked by conflict for around 60 years - multiple armed groups and organized crime have waged war against each other and the state. In 2016, after nearly seven years of negotiations, the FARC demobilized, creating a power vacuum that other groups, such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), Clan del Golfo, and FARC dissidents, quickly filled. Despite the FARC's exit, violence persisted, with cocaine production and illegal mining continuing unabated, leaving ma...
Oct 28, 2024•59 min•Season 5Ep. 6
In May 2024, a prison van was attacked at a highway toll in Normandy, France. In dramatic footage shared on social media, a black SUV, driving the wrong direction, rammed into the prison van just as it went through the barriers. Then gunmen, dressed head-to-toe in black and armed with Kalashnikov rifles got out and started shooting at the van, killing two prison officers. They opened the van and freed the prisoner, a man named Mohamed Amra, aka "The Fly", who escaped with the gunmen. There is no...
Jul 24, 2024•36 min•Season 5Ep. 5
On the 1st May 2024, 711 migrants successfully crossed the Channel between France and the UK in small boats. This year is so far on track to see the highest number of crossings on record. This highly industrialised illicit industry estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of Euros, has seen the coast of northern France demarcated between competing gangs from a specific region of the Middle East, and who have a long history of smuggling. They control the entire length of the route, from beginni...
May 21, 2024•55 min•Season 5Ep. 4
LockBit, the world's largest ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) provider suffered a very public takedown by an international law enforcement task force, Operation Cronos. The ransomware behemoth quickly relaunched just days later. But in a world where trust is key, might the reputational damage be too great? This is the story of the rise of LockBit, its relationship with other infamous cybercriminal groups, its uneasy relationship with some affiliates, its curious leader LockBitsupp, the public take...
Mar 26, 2024•35 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Russian organized crime has a mythology attached to it - the brutal tattooed men of the Vory v Zakone . But those days are long in the past, rapid globalisation saw a new type of organized criminal take the reins in the Russian underworld, spreading their influence as criminal facilitators across the world. But the war in Ukraine has changed that. It's changed the relationship between organized crime and the Russian state, the status quo within the established criminal order, the potential vacuu...
Mar 04, 2024•46 min•Season 5Ep. 2
At the start of the year masked gunman burst into a television studio in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The cameras were live and the entire event was broadcast. The video shows gang members shouting at staff, pushing them to the ground, threatening them with guns and explosives. These pictures subsequently travelled around the world. But this event was just one in a series to hit Ecuador in a short space of time. Car bombs, kidnappings, murder, prison riots, prominent prisoner escapes, and another nationa...
Feb 05, 2024•28 min•Season 5Ep. 1
'The King is dead, long live the King!' In September 2023, Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, stood in a courtroom as a series of charges were laid out, including his alleged role as a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. There is a long list of cartel and organized crime leaders over the past few decades who have been targeted through what become known as the 'Kingpin Strategy'. The strategy aims to weaken, destabilise, and destroy criminal groups through a variety of methods, ...
Dec 04, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 12
“If you can do it without consequences, then you should do it”. What are illicit Financial Flows, or IFFs? And why do they matter? Every illicit market, from drug trafficking, people smuggling, the illegal wildlife trade, arms trafficking etc. all are connected to IFFs. IFFs are about the movement of money across borders that is illegal in some way. The money could be from a criminal act, like corruption or its money associated with the illicit markets above. Perhaps, it could be legitimately ea...
Nov 14, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 11
In September 2023, there were four large cocaine seizures in and around the Atlantic Ocean - off the coast of Ireland, West Africa, Brazil, and Cape Verde. The flows of cocaine that traverse the Atlantic travel mainly by sea, from the huge bulk carriers to small fishing vessels or sailing boats. Much of this illicit drug ends in the cocaine markets of Europe. In this episode of Deep Dive: Monitoring , we briefly take a look at the seizures, what they mean for cocaine markets and the organized cr...
Oct 17, 2023•12 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Scam call centres are a blight on the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to have any dealings with them. They come to you with promises of a short cut to wealth, to fix a non-existent issue with your computer, claiming to be from a charity, threatening you with arrest for unpaid taxes. There are 70 million of these phone calls worldwide every day and they generate billions of dollars each year. Organized crime is very much a part of this industry from Mexico to India and from the Philippines to ...
Oct 02, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 9
For over half a century armed groups in Colombia have battled one another and the state across the country. The FARC, ELN, AUC, AGC, and the infamous drug cartels, have committed untold atrocities on everyday Colombians. These groups use violence to control the local population and to assert territorial control over illicit drug production and trafficking routes. This episode is about the people who live in those areas, those that have suffered at the hands of armed groups and organized crime, a...
Aug 02, 2023•44 min•Season 4Ep. 8
For around two years the Conti ransomware group rampaged across the internet. They attacked hospitals, educational institutions, businesses, governments, and many more, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in ransomware payments. Business was booming for the cybercriminals. At least it was until the Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Conti leadership quickly pledged their loyalty to Russia and then everything began to fall apart. This is the s...
Jun 27, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 4Ep. 7
Throughout history soldiers have used drugs, sometimes to fight better or to stay alert, or perhaps to help cope with the extreme psychological situation and trauma they are faced with. The current conflict in Ukraine is no different. Concerns around this led to the Ukrainian parliament passing a new law that authorizes random drug and alcohol tests on soldiers. Organized crime is nothing if not adaptable, even in this most extreme environment. The soldiers fighting to protect their homeland rep...
May 22, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Part 2: "The truth will triumph". The description of Ahmed's murder showed that the killers were professionals, trained in the use of firearms. But despite the crowds that witnessed the killing, no one has ever been prosecuted for the crime. Since the assassination of Ahmed, press freedom in Ghana has suffered. He is one of a number that have been attacked, harassed and arrested over the last few years, sparking fears for the future of press freedom in the country. Much of the violence has been ...
May 03, 2023•42 min•Season 4Ep. 5
Part 1: "Ahmed was no coward". On World Press Freedom Day (3rd May) 2018, the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, took to the stage in Accra to deliver a speech on press freedom. Ghana, had long been a beacon for press freedom and was selected to host the celebrations. Just a few weeks later, TigerEye PI, the world famous undercover investigative unit led by Anas Aremeyaw Anas released their latest investigation, Number 12, which looked at corruption in professional football. Around the same ti...
May 03, 2023•30 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Part 2: “It’s the worst kept secret in Sudan”. In 2019, the Dossier Centre in London, shared some leaked internal documents from the private military company, the Wagner Group. The documents showed that Wagner had identified several countries they wanted to target for future operations. What was clear is that they often targeted countries with weakened autocratic government, seeking support against an internal threat. In this episode, we navigate the illicit gold trade in Sudan and beyond by stu...
Apr 17, 2023•52 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Part 1: “Who are these guys and what are they doing here?” In late February 2022, Airport workers in Khartoum International Airport in Sudan are stood glued to television screens, watching Russian tanks entering the outskirts of Kyiv in Ukraine. But just outside on the runway, a Russian cargo plane laden with cookies was about to take off, heading to Latakia on the coast of Syria. Earlier that day, officials had inspected the aircraft, suspicious of the cargo manifest. It turned out they were ri...
Apr 17, 2023•43 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Africa is often the forgotten continent for things like drug trafficking, but just look around the news, the African continent plays a critical role in the global illicit drug market – and its growing – And no more so than in East and Southern Africa. As global trade has exploded, African organized criminal networks have established relationships with other criminal organizations around the world from the PCC in Brazil to the Comancheros Bikie Gang in New Zealand. Over the course of a few years,...
Jan 18, 2023•58 min•Season 4Ep. 1
What does the term 'Environmental Crime' mean to you? Probably something like elephant or rhino poaching. Perhaps the plight of the pangolin, the adorable little armoured mammal, often sighted as the "most trafficked animal in the world". But it is so much more than that - from the illegal wildlife trade to illicit plastic waste, and from illegal mining to timber trafficking. The spotlight on environmental crime has never been more prominent, public consciousness around climate change has seen t...
Nov 15, 2022•51 min•Season 3Ep. 10
P4 - 'Ndrangheta - "The Cocaine Gateway" The port of Gioia Tauro in Calabria has long been considered one of the main cocaine gateways into Europe. In this episode we're going to tell the story of the 'ndrangheta and this port. How its completion in the 1990s coincided with the rise of the 'ndrangheta, were certain clans control this important node of the international cocaine market. Our guest Anna Sergi takes us from a 'faida' ('ndrangheta feud) from her childhood in Gioia Tauro to the growth ...
Oct 19, 2022•26 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Part 3 - "The Chamber of Control" Woodbridge, Vaughan, Greater Toronto Area, 2014. A man called Carmine Verduci was gunned down outside a sports café. Over the coming days Italian and Canadian law enforcement alleged that Verduci, born in Calabria, was a connecting bridge between 'ndrangheta clans in the Locride area of Calabria and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). He was reported to be a senior member of what is known as 'The Siderno Group'. In this third episode, Anna Sergi, author of the new b...
Oct 12, 2022•27 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Part 2 - "ndrangheta Royalty Down Under" In 2007, the Australian Federal Police received a tipoff about a container arriving at the Port of Melbourne. The container had come from Italy and was full of tins of tomatoes, inside those tins was the largest ecstasy bust in the world at that time. The AFP had discovered an international drug trafficking criminal syndicate at work. At the centre of this was one criminal dynasty, not only were they a prominent Calabrian mafia clan back in Platì, the hea...
Sep 26, 2022•36 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Part 1 - "The Madonna of the Mountain" In Calabria, southern Italy there is a mountain massif called Aspromonte, "harsh mountain". The villages that hug the mountain slopes, places like San Luca, Natile and Platì are the birthplaces of the clans that make up what is collectively known as ‘Ndrangheta – one of the most powerful organized criminal syndicates in the world. From these humble beginnings the clans have spread their tentacles around the globe and become major players in the internationa...
Sep 05, 2022•45 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Part 2 - "I fear for my life" In 2019, journalist Lourdes Maldonado rose from her seat to speak to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a press conference - it was during this moment she said "I fear for my life" due to a long running legal dispute. Three years later, and just days after that case had been ruled in her favour, she was gunned down outside her home. Officials blamed a local cartel group, but critics were not and still are not convinced by this version of events. There is littl...
May 25, 2022•42 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Part 1 - "It’s a message of terror, to stop asking questions" Mexico is known as one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist on the planet, and 2022 is on record to be the deadliest yet. José Luis Gamboa Arenas , a journalist from Veracruz became the first to be killed this year, the body of Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos , a Sinaloan journalist was found in Culiacán on May 5th taking to total to nine. So how has Mexico got to the point where so many journalists and media workers are being a...
May 09, 2022•42 min•Season 3Ep. 4
