Mafia Cops | The New Underworld | 5

American Scandal - Audible

Organized crime has evolved from traditional mafia structures to global, tech-driven networks centered on trafficking and cybercrime. Experts discuss how law enforcement, recruitment shifts, and globalization have reshap

Key takeaways

• Mafia influence declined due to harsher laws and reduced youth interest

Transcript preview

From Audible Originals, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American scandal. For much of the 20th century, organized crime in the United States was almost synonymous with the mafia. A small number of powerful families dominated cities around the country and their influence ran through gambling, labor, and local politics. Today, those families still exist, but they are a shadow of what they once were, and the organized crime landscape is far more complex and far more powerful. Criminal activity now moves through gangs that stretch across borders, through cyber operations that never touch a physical street corner and through networks that can sit uncomfortably close to legitimate businesses and even state governments. My guest today is Jay Almanese. He is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the country's leading scholars on organized crime, criminal justice and corruption. He's advised the United Nations on transnational crime and spent decades studying how criminal organizations form, adapt, and survive. Our conversation is next. I'm Raza Jaffrey and in the new season of the Spy Who we go back in time to meet Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. As America fights for freedom from Britain, Arnold emerges as one of the rebels greatest generals, but when his loyalty is pushed to the limit, he turns spy and advises a plot to shatter the rebellion and make George Washington a prisoner. Follow the spy who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the the spy who betrayed the American Revolution early and and free on audible. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Western towns selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies. This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr Death, the cowboy, wherever you get your podcasts, or binge the end of entire series right now, only with Audible. is due to law enforcement action versus maybe economic technological or social changes? Yes, it's a very difficult thing to sort out. The mafia clearly is not the force it once was and the law enforcement effort of the 80s and 90s, which was clearly the most significant law enforcement effort against organized crime in the history of the US. A lot of it was made possible by the racketeering laws which passed in 1970, but was used for the first time to my knowledge in 1980s, but was used for the first time to my knowledge in 1980 It's a long complicated law, but it enabled law enforcement to be much more effective in the way that rather than going after somebody for illegal gambling or conspiracy and the usual offenses, if the prosecution can prove that they were engaging in three or more crimes over a period of ten years, I could prosecute you as a criminal enterprise, and that could dramatically increase the penalties of up to 20 years in prison. one up dramatically. And given all the changes in contemporary society and technology since the year 2000, there is no single group in the modern world in organized crime and that's due to all the changes that have occurred over the last generation. So you're correct in saying, you know, the mafia is not what it once was and perhaps will never be what it once was, but you know, I think, you know, rumors of its demise are premature. Let me just give you a quick example just from the past year. In New Jersey, right, a big case. 39 defendants was multiple locations of illegal poker games in the rear of legitimate restaurants. And there was also an illegal online sports book involved. And of course it was associated with members of the Lucchese crime family. These are all very traditional organized crime activities. Illegal gambling extortion by having to, you have to threaten sometimes people to make them pay. And then you have to do something with the ill least of proceeds. You can't go to a car dealership with $10,000 cash and put it down toward a car anymore. All right, because we have money laundering laws. So money laundering has become a separate art in itself to disguise the source of illicit proceeds. So when I see this case, which again happened just a year ago, I said, well this is about as traditional organized crime as it gets. So the structure has changed, that is, there's many more legitimate characters and businesses involved in this. So it's fewer mob guys, but more business people, more business people business people business people, in this Jersey case. There was some councilmen of some town in New Jersey who was in on it. But the underlying activity is pretty much what it's always has been. Let's dive into some of the other changes that might have affected the mafia's for lack of a better word effectiveness as an organization. How about recruitment or maybe lack thereof? Are younger people less interested in getting involved in organized crime? Certainly in the popular conception this was almost a neighborhood job opportunity? Yes it was. Yes it was. you might recall the opening line of Goodfellas, when Henry Hill says, as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a wise guy, because in many of these working class urban communities, especially in New York and Chicago and the big cities, the people driving the nicest cars, wearing the nicest clothes who everybody would be very accommodating toward were the guys who were affiliated with the mob. And so that became sort of a alternate. of pathway to success. And when you look at the history over the 60, 70s, 80s, you know you had people who would say well okay I got caught by the cops running an illegal gambling enterprise maybe some extortion and I got a sentence of five years. There were lots of people willing to do the five years. I'm a stand-up guy I'll protect the family, protect the enterprise. Well as time goes on into the 80s and 90s, there are fewer people. willing to do that, that is the younger people saying, hey look at, you know, I'm your friend, we commit crimes together, but I'm not going to do time for you. And then you combine that with the racketeering laws that had sentences of 20 years. You say, well, maybe I'll do a few years for you, but I'm not, nobody's doing 20 years for you. So you have many more people saying, well, I'm not going to play this game. So that the hold of that tradition of the mob, we have so many people who are interrelated who are interrelated who are interrelated, uncles, friends, even in the mafia cops case, as you know, the two detectives at the center of that case, both of their lives before they became cops involved close associations and sometimes relatives who had strong connections with mafia figures. So all of that is tied together. As time went on, there were fewer young people with that Italian family tradition that you do anything