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“In a New York minute, everything can change”
I got an email yesterday, from an Amazon customer who hasn’t yet received his copy of “Barry ‘the boys,’” my book about the biggest drug smuggler in American history, and it has prompted me to do something I’ve been reluctant to do: Announce my coming—but not quite yet imminent—demise. My reply to the customer whose…
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The Wolves of Wall Street
The most interesting character among the players of the Sarasota ‘hyena pack’—it’s a professional designation used by law enforcement and financial fraud specialists— is Ramy El Batrawi. Plus, he’s still active. Ramy El-Batrawi has been around major cocaine transactions for decades, yet he appears to have emerged unscathed. He is untouchable and knows it. He…
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OTHER GUYS WHO OWNED ANDY BADOLATO’S BEACH HOUSE
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American Show Trial
It was a show trial. Except it wasn’t in Moscow. It was in Brooklyn. The guilt of the defendant was never in question. It was an honest-to-God American show trial. It was a display of an “enemy of the people” at the moment he is smitten by the righteous might of American justice. It was…
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Governments, Gangsters, & the Trial of El Chapo Guzman
The trial of El Chapo Guzman is as disappointing to criminologists trying to understand the deep structure of the drug trade as a rained-out series between The Yankees and Red Sox is to baseball fans waiting to place bets on who’s going to win the American League. This week in El Chapo’s trial was like…
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The Lie at the Heart of the Trial of El Chapo Guzman
The lie at the heart of the trial of El Chapo Guzman is one familiar to every American who understands what happened to this country during Prohibition: Men and women are human. They can be bought, bribed, threatened or cajoled. It is the basis of organized crime. Getting the ‘go-ahead’ from Marta Fernando…
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THE SECRET TRIAL OF ‘EL CHAPO’ GUZMAN
The government’s star witness in the trial of El Chapo Guzman was trying to buy information from a man who was instrumental in the purchase of the DC-9 — dubbed “Cocaine One” for its resemblance to official U.S. government planes — busted in Mexico in April of 2006 carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. Fernando Blengio Cesena, alias…
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The Mystery in Medellin: Why was ‘American Made’ there?
This is a story about a plane crash. Start here: Everybody in-country was tired, or sweaty, or both. “Swelter” is a word that acquires new meaning in a South American jungle. It was the last day of filming. Tom Cruise has been in-country for 20 sweaty days in a row. Everyone was anxious to get…
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Russian in hacking probe linked to alt-right stock fraud
Pavel ‘Red Eye’ Vrublevsky, a Russian businessman under investigation in the FBI’s probe of Russian hacking in the 2016 Presidential election, shared a business address in John Gotti’s former stronghold of Howard Beach, Queens with a company led by a Tampa Mobster convicted in the “alt-right” stock fraud ring run by Sarasota’s own Andrew Badolato, business partner and Breitbart collaborator…