1Shi Jianqiao
In the Warlord Era (1916-1928), when a Chinese assassin named Shi Jianqiao was 19-years-old, her warlord father was defeated and executed by a rival, Sun Chuanfang. Shi spent her 20s tracking Sundown, killing him in 1935. Chinese society was so moved by her act of filial revenge that the court pardoned her.
2. Chicago gangs in the 1970s and 80s made business cards, or "compliment cards," with member nicknames, associated symbols and turf, and the names and symbols of rival gangs. These cards were used to show affiliation, recruit new members, and disrespect rival gangs by inverting their symbols.
3. John Franzese was a mob boss who was taped by an informant discussing the ideal method of disposing of a body. He recommended taking 30 minutes to an hour to dismember the body in a kiddie pool, dry the parts in a microwave and finally mulch them in a commercial-grade garbage disposal.
4. In 2010, a Danish Biker gang named Black Cobra stole 120 boxes of cakes. They took almond tarts, punch rolls, apple crowns, and brownies.
5. Du Yuesheng, a Triad boss was granted the rank of general in the Nationalist Chinese army after he ordered his gang to massacre 1000s of communist supporters. He then became head of the Opium Suppression Bureau, which he used to seize opium to be sold by his own criminal organization.
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6Frank Sheeran
Frank Sheeran, the mob hitman whose life is depicted in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Irishman,” participated in the Dachau Massacre, during which scores of SS concentration camp guards were executed en masse by U.S. GIs after the camp was liberated in April 1945.
7. Mobster Bugsy Siegel traveled to Italy in 1938 and offered to kill Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and Benito Mussolini, but was stopped by his anxious mistress.
8. A Prohibition-era gangster named Dutch Schultz once hung a rival by his thumbs on a meat hook and then wrapped discharge from a gonorrhea infection over his eyes.
9. Ron Launius, the ring leader of Hollywood's Wonderland Gang, was a United States Air Force veteran of the Vietnam era, who had been dishonorably discharged and convicted of smuggling heroin from Vietnam back to the United States in the corpses of American soldiers.
10. In 2013, Italian mafia organization ‘Ndrangheta’ made more money than McDonald’s and Deutsche Bank combined (€53 billion / £44 billion).
11Gregory Scarpa Sr.
Gregory Scarpa Sr., the hitman who helped the FBI solve the 1964 Freedom Summer murders hated black people so much that he refused to take blood from a blood bank, fearing that some of the blood may have come from a black person. He received blood from a fellow mobster, only to contract HIV as a result.
12. There was an Orthodox Jewish gang named New York divorce coercion who kidnapped Orthodox Jewish men and forced them (sometimes with torture) to grant their wives religious divorces. They operated between 1980s and 2013.
13. The Italian mafia is involved in nuclear waste trafficking. They have bought nuclear power plant waste and dumped it in Somalia.
14. A Chicago mobster named Sam DeStefano loaned money at interest rates of 25% by week to very high-risk debtors such as drug addicts, in order to torture them in his cellar when they defaulted.
15. Filippo Marchese was a Sicilian Mafia hitman for the Corleonesi Family who killed his victims by strangling them and then dissolving their bodies in acid. When he was deemed “too violent” and thus a liability, he was killed and disposed off in the same manner as his victims.
16Murder Inc.
Murder Inc. was a contract killing agency which was led by Jewish and Italian gangsters in the 1930s. It was responsible for between 400 and 1000 deaths. Any mob boss was able to hire them, though some have claimed that regular civilians could hire them as well.
17. A gangster named Cheung Tze-keung from Hong Kong was nicknamed ‘The Big Spender.’ In 1996 he managed to kidnap the son of Li Ka Shing (the richest man from Asia). He then received a paid ransom of HK $1.38 billion (equivalent to $180 million USD).
18. Notorious ‘Mafia Cop’, Louis Eppolito, played a small part as ‘Fat Andy’ in Goodfellas. Eppolito and his partner will later be tried and convicted of committing eight murders for the mafia while being NYPD detectives.
19. There was a Mafia boss named Vincent Gigante who for 30 years wandered Greenwich Village in his pajamas mumbling incoherently to himself, in an elaborate act to avoid prosecution. They called him the Oddfather.
20. The Ramji Nagar Gang is a group of thieving families in South India with an annual tradition of robbery in a different state. They pray to the local goddess before the act and vow to never kill nor harm someone who speaks their tongue. Others have since taken up the ‘ancestral profession.’
21Aniello Dellacroce
Mobster Aniello Dellacroce would dress around as a priest to confuse law enforcement and once committed a murder in the Priest outfit.
22. Gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta's "Good Fellas" character was based on him) was put in the Federal Witness Program. However, after multiple relocations, the Feds finally kicked him out because he kept getting drunk and telling his neighbors who he really was.
23. The “Pink Panthers” is an international gang who is responsible for stealing almost $1 billion in jewelry. Many of its members are ex-soldiers. They were most active in the 2000s, and have used disguises, tear gas and even speedboats in their heists.
24. The US Navy, knowing the New York Mafia’s influence over the fish market, enlisted a handful of mob bosses, including Joe “Socks” Lanza, to help track Nazi submarines trying to infiltrate the East Coast.
25. Leonid “Tarzan” Fainberg is a Ukrainian mobster who in the mid-1990s attempted to purchase a Soviet diesel submarine for the Cali cartel to smuggle cocaine. He also owned a strip club named Porky’s.
