Original subtitles

The experts said it was impossible, unthinkable.

"Organized crime doesn't work that way.

It could never happen."

But the evidence prove them wrong.

For years, rumors have circulated

that the world's leading crime syndicates

hold top-secret summit meetings

where the dark lords of the underworld

plan strategies for spreading the virus

of drugs, vice, and corruption.

At first, law enforcement dismissed rumors

of the United Nations of crime as sheer nonsense.

They believed the cultural differences, intense rivalries,

and competitive zeal would forever prevent

international crime bosses from teaming up

in an underworld federation.

The major crime organizations were always seen

as independent sovereign empires,

each operating within a specific territory.

Today, organized crime has been traced

to all regions of the globe.

The traditional zones of influence have overlapped,

eclipsing the power of law enforcement

To track the spread of organized crime,

computer profiles have been established

of the leading international syndicates.

Historically, if you're looking at the roots

of the mafia in Sicily and in Italy,

you can trace it back to really the history of this country

being overrun by a whole bunch of different cultures,

the French, the Spanish, Venetians.

There's never been much

of a law enforcement apparatus on the island.

The Russian Mafia is an extremely

problematic group for law enforcement,

and what makes them different

is that here you're talking

about some extremely bright individuals

who are experts at carrying out a whole range

of activities that are illegal,

everything from illegal immigration to insurance fraud

to crimes within Russia to a growing involvement

here in the United States.

They have a very checkered history.

They go back 300 years, but it was only during

the 1920s and '30s that they were able to make their mark

and prepare the way for what we know

as the modern gangs of Yakuza today.

And really the modern American mafia as we know it

was born up on those streets in the boyhood rumbles

of guys like Luciano and Lucchese

and Frank Costello and Vito Genovese.

They all knew each other, and they were all in the same

what was called a borgata.

Borgata means like a gang.

Pablo Escobar, along with the other members

of the Medellin cartel, were able to mass market

the cocaine, which made it,

they controlled everything from production

to transportation and distribution.

So it became a cartel as opposed to just two

independent-type groups working together.

The relationship between crime organizations

has always been that of bloody power struggles

fueled by cultural mistrust and hatred.

Ever since the '30s, there's been bad blood

between the Sicilian and American mafia.

It started when Lucky Luciano and Tommy Lucchese

rubbed out the Sicilian don Joe Masseria.

The rising stars of the American underground

then hit godfather Salvatore Maranzano.

His murder wiped out Sicilian competition for decades.

Since those bloody days on Brooklyn's streets,

the Sicilian mafia has hated their American rivals.

Naturally, the American mafia never trusted the Sicilians.

Fearful of the competition from the Sicilian heroin empire,

Colombia drug lords also disliked the Cosa Nostra.

In turn, many crime bosses shunned the Colombians.

"Who could do business

with coke-snorting billionaires?" they reasoned.

Meanwhile, the chief competitors in the Eastern Hemisphere,

the Russian mafia and the Yakuza,

always despised each other, and Japanese mobsters

are known to never trust a gangster who isn't Japanese.

It was always thought this mutual hostility

and competitive zeal was more lethal

than bullets or wiretaps in preventing the alliance

of criminal organizations, but no longer.

You see alliances among organized crime groups,

each of them capitalizing on their strengths,

their knowledge of a particular region.

And they've also been extremely clever

at using the computers for a whole variety

of their activities, from promoting drug trade

to transferring money around the world

to laundering money offshore and using it

and encrypting their files so that law enforcement

can't even find out what they're up to.

It now appears a worldwide merger

of the major criminal organizations is underway.

If it succeeds, organized crime will be

the largest business enterprise on the planet.

Ironically, it was a crackdown by law enforcement

that sparked the first partnership

of international criminal syndicates.

In 1987, over 300 gangsters from the Sicilian mafia

stood trial on charges ranging from murder

to heroin trafficking.

It was called the Maxi Trial.

Government resources poured into Palermo

as prosecutors prepared to undertake

the largest trial in Italian history.

The prosecutor's office was provided

with all the support needed to move the trial forward

safely and efficiently.

A fortified courthouse was built

to protect the participants.

Tanks and army troops surrounded the perimeter.

They had cages built for the defendants.

They had glass booths. They had hundreds of guards.

It was just a tremendously secure situation

to try these mafia members.

And the mafia members throughout the trial

would spit at the authorities and yell obscenities.

And in one case, one of them actually stapled

his lips together to show he would not break

the code of omerta, or the code of silence.

For centuries, the oath of silence

has protected the Sicilian mafia, but in the '80s,

the light of justice and the courage of a man

pierced their dark shroud of secrecy.

Judge Giovanni Falcone believed in the power of law,

believed the truth of justice could illuminate

the shadow of lies that shielded the Cosa Nostra.

Falcone was a man of faith.

He never really talked about it very much,

but it was his faith in justice

and his faith that carried him through,

that gave him the strength to go on.

Out of the hundreds of mobsters on trial,

Falcone had his sight set on Tito Riina,

the godfather of the powerful Corleone family.

If Falcone could bring down the Corleones,

he would drive a stake through the heart

of the entire mafia.

But Falcone was up against an extremely cunning

and ruthless criminal.

He was called The Beast.

Riina does not speak Italian well,

speaks no other languages, to my knowledge,

has really not traveled outside of Italy and Sicily,

and made no effort to be involved in

or interested in international matters

other than narcotics trafficking.

At the same time, he had, has

an extraordinary memory.

People say that he never forgot any slight or any favor

and would reward those who favored him

and eliminate those who had slighted him.

He is known among his fellow mafiosi

as an extremely tough, cruel man,

a person not given to random violence,

but a person who sort of fundamental instinct

is to eliminate anyone who might be of danger to him.

The 1987 Maxi Trial

was a major victory for justice.

300 mobsters were convicted. The nation rejoiced.

Falcone was a hero, but his targeted quarry had escaped.

The Beast had gone to ground.

Convicted and sentenced to a life term,

Riina had disappeared, leaving his minions to vent his rage.

Mafia members were furious

and became like a kind of wounded beast

after the convictions.

They were furious.

They were furious at their friends in power,

and they were determined to make them pay.

Breaking the cutthroat yolk of the Cosa Nostra

made Judge Falcone a marked man,

number one on the mafia's hit list.

He was protected by bodyguards and bulletproof cars,

lived in an apartment that was really more like a bunker.

His office could only be entered through a series of doors

with cameras looking at who was entering.

But he was philosophical about it.

He was certainly not fatalistic.

Believed that the enemy was after him

but wanted to accomplish what he could.

Bodyguards, bulletproof limos,

escorts of armed officers all were useless

against the wrath of Tito Riina.

It was a pleasant day in September of 1992.

That Saturday, he had traveled down to Palermo

to visit his wife, who was a magistrate in Palermo,

and was going to be one of his last trips there.

And undoubtedly mafia knew that

and had set out a plan to kill him.

They had people in Rome who were able to communicate

by cellular phone the moment that Falcone left his office.

Someone waiting at the airport could then communicate

to people in Palermo.

The plane has taken off, and it's heading toward Palermo.

There were people waiting outside the airport

to signal his arrival.

And then a couple of miles from the airport,

a squad of mafiosi had placed an enormous quantity

of explosives in a kind of drain pipe

that was underneath the highway itself

so that then on a signal from someone else,

they then detonated this truly massive

quantity of explosives.

The explosion killed Judge Falcone,

his wife, and three bodyguards.

The assassination had shown the mafia

to be what they always were,

animals led by a man who truly was a beast.

The country wanted the mafia banished from Sicily forever.

People were fed up with what was going on.

They were fed up with people like Riina.

They had lost that sense of support

that the mafia had traditionally had,

where the mafia helps poor people

and helps them solve problems and looks out for them,

helps them in their times of need and so on.

The mafia was not being seen that way.

The mafia was being seen as a predatory organization

and that the only people being helped with those themselves

and perhaps some of the highest-level people

in the Italian government.

Realizing the Cosa Nostra

was no longer ruler of their homeland,

Tito Riina and other Sicilian godfathers began searching

for new opportunities on foreign shores.

Before his death, Judge Falcone warned

that if the Sicilians were not stopped,

they would spearhead the formation

of an international criminal coalition.

The judge's warning was ignored.

But in 1989, a drug trafficker was picked up

on a routine smuggling charge.

The story he told sent shock waves

through law enforcement agencies.

It appeared Judge Falcone's prophecy had come true.

State your name for the record.

Giuseppe Cuffaro.

Where do you reside, Mr. Cuffaro?

Palermo, Sicily.

Do you have any knowledge

of the Corleone family or anyone by the name of Tito Riina?

Yes.

Yes, a simple word, but if true,

Cuffaro broke the Sicilian code of silence.

I work for one of the top men in the Madonia family,

his grandfather, Tito Riina.

They want him to make a deal with the Colombians.

Questions ripped through the agents' minds.

Have they stumbled on a mafia insider willing to talk?

I want full immunity.

Or perhaps Cuffaro was just a lying,

desperate criminal hoping for a reduced sentence.

Okay, just let me know.

A Medellin.

In western Colombia,

there's a pastoral countryside

of cattle ranges and lush green fields.

Here reside the massive plantations of the Medellin Cartel.

In the '80s, much of the cocaine

smuggled into America came from Medellin.

Each year, the harvest of coca plants

yielded billions of drug money

for the boss of the cartel, Pablo Escobar.

I can't think of any single example of a criminal figure

that has ever accumulated a personal fortune

the size of Pablo Escobar's.

He had women, he had horses.

He had beautiful fixtures in his homes.

He had an antique car collection.

He had all the rest of it.

He was a man who was, who liked to spend his money.

Pablo Escobar had wealth beyond imagining,

all derived from a drug empire

that was built on the blood and bones of thousands.

Pablo Escobar was a mafia boss.

He was a ruthless drug trafficker

who probably killed more people

than any individual drug trafficker

in the history of Colombia.

He was a ruthless killer.

This man aligned himself with narcoterrorism.

He placed bombs on airplanes. He murdered people.

Pablo Escobar was no folk hero.

He has blood on his hands in Colombia

that'll be in their history books for the next century.

A small-time drug pusher

may be despised and vilified,

but sadly, in this day and age,

a murdering billionaire drug trafficker like Escobar

is celebrated by some as a man of accomplishments.

People in Colombia loved him,

especially in the neighborhood that he grew up

where he built hospitals, schools, soccer fields,

and he was looked upon as a hero, a Robin Hood, if you will,

as opposed to a drug trafficker.

He is one of the men that I think,

one of the 10, 20, or 30 people of the late 20th century

that I think has really counted, has made a difference.

Of course, the vast majority of what he did

was extremely unfortunate for Colombia, for the world.

But he was the architect of the cocaine industry,

the way we see it today.

By the late '80s, Escobar's rise

to fame and fortune began a steep decline.

The boss of the Medellin Cartel was a wanted man,

fleeing the combined police forces

of Colombia and the United States.

Special Agent Ramiro Escudero spent 12 years

investigating drug trafficking and money laundering

for the FBI's Los Angeles field division.

So we were, as a government, aware of his power,

and we were trying to assist Colombia

in either apprehending him

or extraditing him to the United States.

Do you know the whereabouts of Pablo Escobar?

No.

Did Mr. Escobar participate in the deal

between the Sicilian mafia and the Medellin Cartel?

No, it's just Johnny Galatalo, my boss,

and this bigshot from the Escobar family.

Where'd the meeting take place?

Aruba.

An island off the coast of Venezuela,

Aruba's only resources are the beaches,

resorts, and a carefree banking system

that matches the island lifestyle.

Aruba is a money-laundering center

for the mobsters of the world.

In the late '80s, the Sicilian mafia

was the island's principal landowner.

Did you attend that meeting?

Yeah, sure. I went everywhere Johnny went.

What were your duties?

Back up, you know, make sure everything goes real smooth,

keep my eyes, my ears open.

See, we didn't know this Colombian guy,

and Johnny, he was kind of worried

that he might be a cokehead.

And the family, they really wanted this deal to go down,

and it was up to Johnny to do it.

So that first day, Johnny was a little bit nervous.

You know, I would be, too.

You don't ever want to displease Tito Riina.

It's him.

Aponte had his own jet. Turned out to be a nice guy, too.

Really knew how to enjoy life.

Right from the start, he and Johnny got along.

Where did they meet on the island

to discuss the deal?

Everywhere.

They went fishing, sailing, walking on the beach.

All the time they were talking business.

I had myself a real good time in Aruba.

The deal, Cuffaro, what about the deal?

The way Johnny explained it, Aponte caught on right away.

Said the deal made good business sense.

What made good sense?

That we'd trade our heroin for their coke.

That way Colombians could move their heroin

while we could move their coke in Europe.

That's where we had the fronts and the networks,

and they didn't.

The deal the Sicilian was offering

was too good for the Colombians to refuse.

Heroin has a higher market value than cocaine,

and the Colombians had coke to burn.

Plus the distribution costs to Europe

were more than it cost to produce the drug.

By merging the resources,

the two organizations would control

the drug market on two continents.

Aponte said he was sure the cartel would agree.

The timing was right, and like Johnny said,

it made good business sense.

All it took was cooperation.

Now, Aponte, see now, Aponte, he was the one

that suggested we use Big John to move the drugs.

Big John, who's he?

Nah, he's a she, and she's a ship, a freighter.

In Aruba, we loaded a ton of coke.

We could've put on 500 tons.

But Aponte, he said this was just a trial run.

And Big John, she took off for Sicily.

The ship was to offload

at a small fishing village on the west coast.

I was ordered to call Aponte as soon as I spotted it.

I was at that village for two stinkin' weeks.

Big John, she came in, though, no problem.

What happened then?

Well, we offloaded the coke,

and then we put on some heroin for the Colombians.

Where did the ship offload the drugs?

Somewhere in the United States, that's all I know.

Other ships followed.

Europe was soon buried under an avalanche

of Colombian coke distributed by the Sicilians,

while in America, Sicilian heroin was flowing in

from the Colombian network.

The first partnership between two of the world's

major criminal organizations exploded

in a tidal wave of cash.

To clean the billions of dollars in drug money,

the Sicilians and Colombians turned to the newest member

of the world's international crime club, the Russian mafia.

The meltdown of the Iron Curtain

brought anarchy and chaos to the Russian economy.

With Big Brother dead and buried,

Mother Russia was ripe for the taking

by ruthless crooks with great ambitions.

In the last month of 1991,

the same month that the hammer and sickle came down

over the Kremlin, a large group of Soviet mafia leaders,

Russian mafia leaders, met in a dacha outside Moscow.

They'd had many councils and many meetings in the past.

This was one of their ways of arranging the government,

so to speak, or the governing bodies of crime

in the old Soviet Union.

And on their agenda, on the top of the agenda

was what to do as the system was imploding around them.

Everything was for sale. Everyone had a price.

In this climate of corruption and anarchy,

the Russian mafia infiltrated corporations,

banks, and government agencies.

They set up shop as the black market brokers

and money cleaners for organized crime.

The Russian mob's best customer was the Colombian cartels.

Engorged with millions from their partnership

with the Sicilians, the cocaine kings

went on a spending spree.

The Colombians lusted for advanced technology

and high-tech weaponry.

Acting as middlemen,

Russian mafia sold the Colombian's radar-jamming technology,

munitions, armament, even attack helicopters.

US law enforcement was powerless to stop many of the deals

between the Colombians and Russians,

but one deal they discovered

seemed right out of a James Bond thriller.

The leading characters were a strip club owner

called Tarzan, an undercover agent named Sasha,

and a Soviet submarine commander.

Some title the operation 20,000 Kilos under the Sea.

Run silent, run deep.

Move 100 tons of drugs in a single voyage.

It doesn't take a criminal genius to dream up such a scheme,

but it does take the combined power

of organized crime to make it happen.

The plot first came to the surface

at Miami's division of the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

In the early '90s, Miami was a crossroad of the underworld,

jet-setting gangsters from the Chinese triads

of Southeast Asia to the nearby Caribbean posses

and the mafia families of New York.

All the world's crime organizations

had field operations in Miami,

but the largest migration of criminals was from Russia.

The influx of Russian mobsters to Miami was so great

local FBI, DEA, and immigration service officials

had informal meetings in what was dubbed

the Little Odessa Room.

Here they sorted through a bewildering array

of rumors, tips, and leads,

shuffling through names they couldn't even pronounce.

One name they quickly learned was Vyachelsav Ivankov.

I first became aware of Ivankov

whenever I was talking to the Russian authorities

and asked them to help us identify the major criminals

in the United States that came out of Russia,

and they provided me the name of Ivankov.

Well, when we first started looking at Ivankov,

he was bouncing from one city to another.

He was primarily in New York City,

but he was in Boston, and he was in Denver.

He was in Los Angeles, and he was in Miami,

and he was in San Francisco.

Then he may go back into Russia to meet with other thieves.

To say that he was the major figure

in the United States, yes, he was.

There's no question in our mind about it.

There was no question

in the Russian authorities' mind about it.

You have to kind of understand that Ivankov's reputation

is even bigger in Russia than it is in the United States.

Ivankov began his ascent to the upper regions

of the Soviet underground while incarcerated

in the brutal Siberian Gulag.

Admired by other prison inmates,

Ivankov was elected to the status of thief in law,

a position held by an elite few professional criminals

who were powerful, charismatic, and brutally ruthless.

In 1991, Ivankov was released from prison.

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs informed the FBI

that Ivankov immediately left for America.

His mission, take control and organize

Russian criminal activities throughout North America.

Ivankov's base of operation

was a Brighton Beach section of New York City.

Brighton is cited by the "New York Press"

as a center of Soviet emigre organized crime.

By 1992, Ivankov was under constant surveillance.

The FBI tracked his movements

of the major cities of the world.

It was no surprise when agents traced Ivankov to Miami.

It was around this time that a new name

began to pop up with increasing frequency, Tarzan.

This was a nickname for a Russian immigrant

who settled in Brighton Beach in the late '80s.

In the Ukraine, Leonard Fainberg was trained as a dentist.

In Brighton, he was known as a friendly, fun-loving guy.

But as Fainberg neared 30, he began to change.

He started dressing like a gangster, talked tough,

and reportedly dreamed of becoming a thief in law

like his idol, Ivankov.

In 1990, Tarzan left Brighton,

telling friends he was going to make his mark in Miami.

To the feds in Miami,

Tarzan sounded like just another loser

dreaming of the big time.

Then they heard that Tarzan was somehow involved

in the sale of Soviet helicopters.

To determine the truth of the rumors

about the wannabe Russian wiseguy,

they decided to test the feasibility

of an undercover operation.

A DEA agent who was fluent in Russian

was assigned as the undercover operator.

Tarzan ran a strip club called Porky's,

and he was basically someone the Russians would go to

to get girls or drugs, strictly small-time stuff.

But then we started to hear about him

and Soviet military equipment,

and that's basically when I was brought in.

Like Tarzan, I was from the Ukraine

and had lived in Brighton Beach.

Tarzan's club was in a red light district

near the airport.

The initial strategy was to attempt contact

and determine if it was possible to get the suspect talking.

Sasha's cover was that he was just another

Russian immigrant looking to score.

♪ Oh, oh, yeah

Porky's was a real scumbucket.

We couldn't believe that the owner of this joint

could be putting together the deals we were hearing about.

A police informer Tarzan trusted was in place.

At first Tarzan was suspicious

until he learned that Sasha was also born in the Ukraine

and had lived in the old neighborhood.

Yeah!

Just make me a profit.

What's the circuit?

Tarzan had taken the bait. The operation was on.

Tarzan had no major hits on his sheets.

Only a, I think, a lewd behavior in public charge

and some strong-arm jobs, nothing major at all.

So it really seemed odd

that we had this whole undercover operation going

for this little sleazebag.

But of course, it turned out

to be much bigger than we initially thought.

Sasha's job was to become Tarzan's best friend,

to get Tarzan talking.

To learn what he knows requires Sasha

to dress like Tarzan, talk like him, act like him.

Sasha, we should do business together,

two guys from the old neighborhood.

What do you think? - Sure, sure,

but what are we talking about?

I want to open up another nightclub like this.

What, Porky's 2?

Maybe, hey, it don't look like much,

but it makes a bundle.

No business, no business is better

at getting money than a club.

Money laundering was not

what Sasha wanted to hear.

What else you got going on?

But sooner or later,

he knew a guy like Tarzan couldn't resist

talking about his big deal.

It looks like nightclubs don't interest you,

but I got something big, huge.

There are these guys I worked with.

I supplied them with bulletproof limos,

choppers, that kind of thing.

Well, they got in touch with me, and get this.

They want a submarine.

A submarine?

Yeah, a sub, a Soviet military submarine

with a crew of 25.

They want to run drugs up and down the West Coast.

Do these guys have the money?

Do they have the money?

These guys have enough money to buy a whole armada.

They're the Colombians!

Street surveillance was ordered.

Drug-smuggling submarines sold by a two-bit punk like Tarzan

seemed too fantastic to believe,

but the feds were taking no chances.

Tarzan's contact with the Colombians was Juan Almeida.

The Colombians paid for Tarzan's trips to Russia

with sacks of money dropped off by Almeida.

Much of the cash Tarzan either banked or spent.

Tarzan was on a roll, partying at Porky's then jetting off,

returning with snapshots of subs for sale

and boasting about his contacts with the Russian mafia.

But after months, Tarzan seemed no closer to finding a sub.

Investigators began wondering if the whole deal was a scam,

but the investigation continued.

I told Tarzan that we were gonna have to look like experts

if we were going to fool the Colombians.

I told him since I had experience in the Marines,

I had the contacts we needed

to get all the technical advice.

I became Tarzan's sub advisor.

He'd come back from Russia with pictures

and questions and all, and basically

I'd have to fake my way through it.

That was pretty easy to do

since he didn't know squat about military technology.

I never thought the deal would actually happen,

but you know, somehow Tarzan came through.

He got his hands on a Tango-class diesel submarine.

Tarzan told me that the Russians are practically

giving away mothball Soviet subs

because the military's broke.

So basically that's what happened.

He got a civilian agency to approve it as surplus,

and they approved the sail for oceanographic research.

He even found 25 out-of-work sailors for a crew

and an admiral who figured that skippering a drug sub

would be better than the, I guess, standing in bread lines.

In Russia, a final meeting was held.

The sub was waiting at the dock.

With the admiral by his side, Tarzan made his closing pitch.

This is number one machine in Russia.

But the admiral's English was limited,

and the Colombian admitted to only speaking Spanish,

so Tarzan translated to Almeida,

who translated for the Colombian.

Since neither knew a periscope from a torpedo tube,

communication was difficult.

That's 'cause it's, it has very, very good displacement.

Very good for storage, good for cocaine. Very good.

Then a problem came up

the Colombian heard loud and clear.

There is a little problem.

Because machine was in storage, it, it cannot go under.

It doesn't submerge right now.

No, it cannot.

You have to tow it, but, but it's okay.

It's okay because, because we tow it. We can tow it!

Oceanography, it's very good.

It's very good machine! We can tow it!

We got good cover! Come back!

Cover or no cover,

the Colombian wasn't buying that a Soviet submarine

and tow to Colombia would not attract attention.

Very good cover!

From evidence obtained

by the undercover operation,

Tarzan was convicted of racketeering.

Tarzan basically turned state's evidence,

and he's now in the witness protection program.

You ever have contact with him again?

No, not at all.

The Colombians may have backed out,

but the scheme to use a submarine for drug smuggling

was a warning shot across the bow

of law enforcement everywhere

of what can happen when gangs unite.

Far as is known, a Soviet submarine

has never been used for dope smuggling,

but the alliance between the Sicilians, Colombians,

and the Russian mafia did succeed in forming

a chain of evil that spanned continents.

The final link was forged when East met West

as the American mafia united

with the fearsome Yakuza of Japan.

New York was a port of entry

for most of Europe's immigrants,

and it became the breeding ground

for some of organized crime's most notorious members.

Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky

all came from immigrant families

who settled in the Five Points area,

a crowded ghetto with a long history

of Irish, Jewish, and Italian gang activity.

It was here a diverse bunch of ethnic gangs

coalesced in the early 1930s.

Five criminal groups or families emerged

as a central core of a nationwide crime syndicate

generally referred to as the mob.

Really the modern American mafia as we know it

was born up on those streets in boyhood rumbles

of guys like Luciano and Lucchese

and Frank Costello and Vito Genovese.

These were guys who were innovative thinkers.

They were smart. They were shrewd.

They were not educated in the academic sense,

but they understood business.

They understood markets.

They had all the requisite talents

to become great businessmen.

But for reasons that we don't quite yet understand,

they went in another direction.

The mob's first big break came

when the sale of alcohol was banned in the '20s.

Profits from bootleg liquor

filled the war chest of America's mafia.

No longer would mafia families

be struggling Italian immigrants from the slums.

After World War II, the mafia expanded their operations,

hauling in millions from gambling in Las Vegas and Cuba

and from cash cows such as labor racketeering

and narcotics trafficking.

With politicians and police across the country

on their payroll, the mafia was on a roll

that seemed unstoppable.

Today, mafia godfather John Gotti is in jail,

and the old generation of dons

have retired to the golf course.

Their successors are often brash, stupid, and inexperienced.

Good news for law enforcement,

as former FBI agent Jules Bonavolonta explains.

The new leaders, the leaders of today,

the second and third team, as I've always called them,

they're tied not by honor, respect, and family.

They're tied by the economy.

They're tied by money. They're tied by greed.

And greed and money, those ties are much easier to break

than honor, respect, and family.

So what we're finding is a much less competent

mafia leader today.

You know, you ever see those charts,

and you know, the original Neanderthal or the Lucy,

wherever it is, the earliest man that kind of,

they look sort of ape-like.

But as the time goes on, they get smarter.

Their brain cases get bigger,

and now they're erect Homo sapiens in business suits.

It's the opposite way here.

By the '80s, the American mafia was seen

as the poor relative of the international crime family.

Recently there's been disturbing evidence

the mafia is on the rise, aided by an ally from the East.

They began as warriors

protecting the interest of feudal lords.

In the 16th century, they became noble protectors,

fighting for the rights of the common people.

With these roles came power, and power tends to corrupt.

Today the Yakuza are among the wealthiest

and powerful of organized crime syndicates,

also the most corrupt.

In the '60s, the Yakuzas first established

a beachhead into America's underworld.

It was in the tropical paradise of Hawaii

that the gang from the East

met their counterparts from the West.

Yakuza members often served American mobsters

when the Japanese were working as kitchen help

in Hawaiian restaurants.

Like they say, the Japanese are a patient people.

Three decades later, estimates rate Yakuza investment

in American business at $1 billion annually.

Now the Yakuza and the American mob conduct joint ventures

to the gambling oasis of Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

The Yakuza charters planes and fills them with high rollers.

Once on American soil, the mafia takes over the operation.

The mob provides luxury accommodations, sex if desired,

supervises the action at the tables, bankrolls the losers,

and sends enforcers out to collect.

If a gambler makes it back to Japan without paying up,

the Yakuza will be calling

on behalf of their mafia partners.

The alliance between the Yakuza and the US mafia

means that huge amounts of money

are streaming across the world,

secret funds that might be supporting

the formation of a vast criminal coalition.

What began as a terrifying plot

hatched on a tranquil island in the Caribbean

is fast becoming a reality.

By merging their organizations,

international crime is now a financial colossus

making an estimated trillion dollars a year.

With such wealth, the underworld has risen

into the realm of legitimate commerce

positioned to dominate the world.

What can be done to stop the growth of this global menace?

From the past, we know traditional methods are failing.

Judge Falcone finally did get his man.

Two years after Falcon's assassination,

The Beast was captured.

Tito Riina is now serving a life sentence.

But today the Sicilian mafia remains stronger than ever.

A few years after the historic Aruba deal,

the celebrity coke king Pablo Escobar was gunned down

while fleeing from police.

Today, the world's appetite for coke

is still fed from the deadly harvest

at the plantations of Medellin.

Johnny Galatalo was arrested on narcotics smuggling charges.

Waldo Aponte's whereabouts are unknown,

but the partnership they brokered

between the Sicilian mafia and Colombian cartels continues.

The Russian mob boss Ivankov

is currently serving a 10-year sentence,

but Russian crooks say an American prison term

is a vacation compared to the Gulag.

The wannabe Russian mobster did make his mark in a way.

Leonard Fainberg gave names and testimony

against the Russian mafia

and is now under federal protection.

Tarzan's a marked man, and the Russian mafia's

deadly presence in America continues to grow.

Obviously the solution to prevent organized crime

from becoming a global power

lies not in the methods of the past.

Today there are close to 200 nations in the world.

Each has its own rights of sovereignty,

laws, and police restrictions.

But crime knows no boundaries.

Today, organized crime is a shadow nation undivided.

Richard Ward is the executive director

of the College of Criminal Justice

at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, Texas.

He is also an authority

on transnational and organized crime.

We don't have an international court,

criminal court, for example.

So there's no place to take criminals, if you will.

So jurisdictions change.

One of the real problems

is the legal definitions of crime.

What is a crime in one country

might not be a crime in another country.

There isn't global law enforcement. That's the problem.

And so therefore there isn't an international

law enforcement effort that is capable

of addressing this problem.

The United States is gearing up to fight organized crime,

but they're dependent on dealing

with the law enforcement of other countries.

And sometimes these crime groups

are committing their activities

in seven or eight different countries simultaneously.

If the thought of a global police force

or world court is frightening, consider this.

Radioactive materials continue to disappear

from nuclear arsenals at an alarming rate.

No other substance has a greater value on the black market.

Many experts say it is only a matter of time

before an unholy union is formed

between organized crime and a terrorist state.

Result, a global menace that threatens

the security and safety of all.

Organized crime is an outgrowth of a world

whose common history is that of war,

violence, and bloodshed.

In the 20th century, the worship of wealth

has reached a zenith

among the industrialized nations of the world.

As long as societies lust for power,

neglect the poor and unfortunate, and promote materialism,

organized crime, no matter its origin and language,

will continue to plunder the world,

enriching itself from our own weakness and greed.

I'm Robert Stack. Thanks for joining us.