The DEA said they have seized an unprecedented amount of fentanyl and fake prescription pills containing the deadly opioid.
The agency seized more than 15,000 pounds of fentanyl in 2021, enough to kill every American. Agents have also seized more than 20m fake pills made to look like Xanax, Adderall and Oxycontin. Pill mills are pouring out product from production facilities in Mexico run by drug cartels using chemicals from China. The CDC said more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. during the past year. More than 75,000 of the deaths involved opioids — mainly fentanyl.
Cartels offer drugs on U.S. social media sites. They harness the perfect drug delivery tool — apps that are available on every smartphone in the U.S. While Facebook has historically been a popular place for those looking to buy and sell drugs, Snapchat and Instagram are the most popular apps for teens. New apps pop up every day. Social media companies aren't doing enough to stop the ads according to the DEA.
Both men were put away by Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry — Trump's older sister — who said the evidence “fairly shrieked of the defendants’ guilt.”
Richard DeSciscio, 79, and Louis Manna, 92, have been behind bars since being sentenced to 80 and 75 years respectively in 1989 for racketeering and murder conspiracy. The mobsters are hoping the First Step Act will be their ticket out of the big house. The law allows for certain prisoners to be granted early release.
So far, things haven’t gone their way. Last month release was denied to Manna with the judge stating, “His numerous crimes were extremely serious and heinous.”
Manna plans an appeal. Manna was consigliere of the Genovese crime family. DeSciscio’s case before the same judge is pending.
On Nov 27th there were reports of a narco plane landing in southern Orange Walk. The aircraft was formerly a narco jet, it had been confiscated and decommissioned by the Government of Belize two years ago. In January 2020, the narco jet crash landed in the vicinity. The government spent thousands trying to repair the Gulfstream G2 jet and move it. Guards stationed at the site to secure the aircraft had to be paid. The soft soil at the location made it impossible for the Government to extract the jet. Belize decided to sell it to a Belmopan businessman. He ordered his employees to remove useful scraps from the aircraft.
The Gulfstream II (G-II) is an American twin engine business jet. The first Gulfstream II flew on October 2, 1966. 256 were produced from 1967 through 1980. Depending on air worthiness, used ones can sell for $1.5m or less, with the average price running around $2.5m.
Marvin Porcelli decided to decorate his Christmas tree with packets of drugs and cash. Porcelli, the drug dealer, took photos of the Christmas tree decorations on his mobile phone. The images were eventually retrieved by cops, who added them to a huge pile of evidence proving his involvement in a major narcotics ring. Cops in Merseyside said Porcelli was arrested as part of a bigger operation, named Overboard.
Marvin Porcelli was caged for seven years and six months.
Leonardo Rizzuto exits the Bellerose cafe, coffee in hand.
Daniel Renaud of
Le Press offers a view of the Montreal underworld. HERE. The price of a kilo of cocaine was around $45k before the pandemic, and peaked at nearly $80k at the height of the health crisis. The price is now said to be around $36k. Relations "have been close" for two years between the Hells Angels and the Mafia. Influential members meet regularly, like a party Dec 10 at the Café Bellerose in Laval.
Hells Angels Martin Robert and Stéphane Plouffe are the two heavyweights in Montreal.
Robert is considered the most influential Hells Angel in Quebec. Ontario Hells Angel Rob Barletta, well known to be involved in sports betting, now wears the colors of the Montreal section. Cops say that gang leader Gregory Woolley has returned to the Montreal Chapter's Hells Angels fold. The mafia is unstable and still has no leader. The Sicilian clan, the former Rizzuto clan, is still considered the strongest, but its influence is in steady decline. Street gangsters never disappeared, what is new, cops say, is that their members are younger and have more guns. While at one time the conflicts opposed the Reds and the Blues, today there are quarrels between members of groups of the same allegiance.
Carabbia served 25 years and was released in 2002.
The former head of the Youngstown faction of the Cleveland organized crime family, Ronald 'Ronnie the Crab' Carabbia, has died at 92.
'Ronnie the Crab' is more notorious for being imprisoned in the late 1970s as an accomplice to the 1978 Cleveland car bombing murder of gangster Danny Greene. Star witness and confessed bomber Raymond Ferritto switched his story to later blame Ronald Carabbia for ordering the hit on Greene.
A jet filled with cocaine landed on a rough strip in Guatemala on Jan 27, 2020. The Guatemalan military recovered 1,700 kg of cocaine in Laguna del Tigre National Park. More than 40 narco aircraft have been intercepted in Guatemala this year. Dozens more landed and took off again. This plane made news when it was flown out by a Guatalmalan Air Force pilot. The narco jet was a Hawker Siddeley HS 125/Hawker 800, an aircraft known for its hardy airframe and landing gear.
“We are talking about an industry that has enough money to abandon million-dollar planes in the jungle,” Guatemalan Army Col. Juan de la Paz said.
Air routes have proven difficult to block. Enforcement in Guatemala’s remote corners is almost nonexistent.
“Their resources are infinite, and we are just trying to keep up.” 90% of the cocaine consumed in the US transits through Guatemala. Airstrips are being cut into Laguna Del Tire National Park to land jets of cocaine. Jets can carry more than $100m worth of cocaine. Submarines and go fast boats through the Pacific have been under pressure from U.S. Coast Guard vessels. Cocaine-filled jets once flew to Mexico and Honduras, until those countries developed aerial interdiction teams. Guatemala's National Park has no such dangers.
They lived in a hillside villa on the edge of Rionegro, Escobar’s home town.
As a key figure in a £354m cocaine ring, Andrew Deamer was used to a gangster’s lifestyle. Dubbed the East Midlands Escobar, his Christmas dinner is in La Picota jail in Bogota. Deamer spent Christmas apart from Colombian wife Marcela Zapaleta and their 10 golden retrievers. They drove a Rolls-Royce.
Deamer disguised cocaine as dog and cat food and shipped it to the UK, mainland Europe and the US. Deamer cut a deal for or a lighter sentence of 14 years and eight months.
Montreal's 35th murder is Charles Boucher-Savard, 35. He died in hospital after being shot multiple times. He was released from a federal pen in September after serving two-thirds of a sentence for stabbing Giuseppe Capobianco of the Luppino family.
Charles-Olivier Boucher-Savard, then 31, was charged with attempted murder after a home invasion of Natale Luppino in 2018, an influential member of the Ontario mafia. Boucher-Savard stabbed Luppino's nephew, Giuseppe Capobianco, four times before the weapon broke. Injured, Capobianco managed to get out of the residence and call police.
Boucher-Savard pleaded guilty to one count of assault with bodily harm. In 2014 Boucher-Savard was arrested with henchmen of the Quebec Hells Angels and found guilty of drug trafficking.
Natale Luppino and brother Rocco are influential members of the Luppino-Violi clan in Ontario. Rocco's son Cece Luppino was murdered in January 2019. Nobody has been arrested.
Sources say a conflict over the control of sports betting operations could be the backdrop for many of the attacks.
It took 26 years for a Mexican Mafia death sentence to reach Donald Ramon Ortiz. A member of the Mexican Mafia, Ortiz was cast out of the gang in the mid-1990s. Ortiz, they decided, should be killed. For the next 26 years as he cycled through county jails, state prisons and brief periods on the street, he wore a target on his back. Ortiz knew he was a marked man. Authorities knew it too. Whenever they discovered a plot to kill Ortiz or he was attacked in prison, they’d offer to protect him. His answer was the same: I can take care of myself.
On Nov. 19, Chino police were called. A man had walked up to Ortiz and fired a bullet into his head, leaving him to die in the street.
Ortiz was dead by the time cops arrived. A witness told police that a man with a thin build, about 5 feet 9 inches tall and wearing a blue suit jacket, exchanged a few words with Ortiz before shooting him once in the head. It was likely a Mexican Mafia 'camarada', an associate who is not yet a full-fledged member. “When you’re deemed ‘no good’ by the Mexican Mafia, there’s no rehabilitation. There’s no coming back from that.”
Marvin Porcelli was caged for seven years and six months.
“We are talking about an industry that has enough money to abandon million-dollar planes in the jungle,” Guatemalan Army Col. Juan de la Paz said.
Air routes have proven difficult to block. Enforcement in Guatemala’s remote corners is almost nonexistent. 
