Hells Angels, Flying Tigers 1942

A Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was rescued after being buried 50 years ago on a South Pacific Island. 13,738 were produced during WWII. Most famous were the “Flying Tigers.” They were volunteers in service to the Chinese Air Force against the Japanese. The unit’s 3rd Pursuit Squadron of 10 planes was comprised of Marine Corps aviators. They called themselves the Hell’s Angels.

R.T. Smith

HAMC official history says the name comes from a World War II veteran from the Flying Tigers. Flying Tiger Arvid Olson was a close friend of one of the founders of the Hells Angels.

The "Death’s Head" logo can be traced to two U.S. Army Air Corps patches, the 85th Fighter Squadron and the 552nd Medium Bomber Squadron.

CCP laundered billions in Italy

In September 2022, the Italian Tax Police (Guardia di Finanza), visited a couple in Brescia, a man and his wife. They had sent to Slovenia and other Eastern European countries 4.5 million euros as alleged payments of ferrous materials that had never entered Italy. Cops decided to dig in the garden, where they found metal drums full of banknotes for a total of eight million euros. Another three millions euro were found buried in the couple’s cellar. All this money had come from China. “Operazione Via della Seta” (Silk Road) involved hundreds of Tax Police agents for several years.

What they discovered is a bombshell. Evidence was uncovered conclusively proving that the Chinese Communist Party routinely cooperates with criminals — the Italian Mafia, Colombia’s drug cartels, and Russian oligarchs close to Putin — to launder billions. The whole operation has been traced back to those who organized it in Beijing and Shanghai: a pool of banks led by the Bank of China, the fourth largest bank in the world and which is a puppet of the CCP itself. The way of sending money to China and taking a part of it back to Italy (or elsewhere) is extremely complicated, and involves real banks in other countries, including in Switzerland.

2 Americans dead - 'accidentally' kidnapped by Mexican cartel

Two US citizens kidnapped by drug traffickers were found dead while two others escaped that fate. Officials said it was a case of mistaken identity. The victims crossed the border into the city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas state for medical reasons. Survivors Latavia Washington McGee and Eric James Williams were returned to the United States. One suffered a gunshot wound to the leg and the other was unharmed. The US State Department advises against travel to Tamaulipas due to dangers including "gun battles, murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, forced disappearances, extortion, and sexual assault."

Doped Gold - Perth Mint

A leaked internal assessment revealed that the Perth Mint might be forced to repatriate $9 b worth of gold bars after masking the sale of diluted or ‘doped’ gold bullion to China. Gold bars can never be made 100 per cent pure, so there will always be some other material that makes up bullion. The industry standard is for bars to be 99.99 per cent gold, known as 'four nines' gold. Refiners keep their gold as close to 99.99 per cent as possible – because any gold over that threshold isn't paid for by the customer. The mint's processes produced 99.996 per cent pure gold, meaning about 0.006 per cent of each bar was "giveaway", so to reduce that amount, silver was added to the mint's bars. The Western Australia government-owned mint started doping its gold in 2018.

The mint saved $600k per year as a result of its doping scheme. In September 2021, the doping scheme started to unravel. Two bars violated Shanghai Gold Exchange’s requirements and included excessive silver. Up to 100 tonnes of gold supplied to the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) didn't meet Shanghai’s exact purity criteria for silver content.

It wasn’t just one faulty batch, it was the majority of the gold bars produced throughout the course of the three-year doping scheme.

The mint tried to keep this knowledge from China. The Perth Mint stopped its gold doping program the moment the failed assay was detected.

Spanish wine thieves corked for 54 months

Included in the haul was a 217-year-old bottle of Château d’Yquem worth €350k.

A court in Spain has sentenced two people to 54 months in prison after the theft of €1.6m worth of wine from a high-end restaurant in a heist that made headlines around the world. Owners of Atrio hotel and restaurant in the city of Cáceres sounded the alarm after discovering 45 bottles of wine missing.

Nine months later, a former Mexican beauty pageant contestant and a Romanian-Dutch man were arrested in Croatia. The wines are gone. Priscila Lara Guevara and Constantín Dumitru were sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

“I’ve murdered. I’ve beaten. I’ve robbed." - Anthony Arillotta

Twenty years ago, Anthony J. Arillotta stood at the bottom of a makeshift grave he and two other gangsters had spent hours digging. They labored in a wooded lot at the behest of mob boss Adolfo 'Big Al' Bruno in the fall of 2003. Arillotta was on the edges of a mob coup. The grave could have become the resting place for any number of thugs. Arillotta betrayed his oath to the mob, testifying in two murder trials in 2011 and 2012. He spent eight years in witness protection while in prison, then cut ties with the program and returned to his hometown in 2017. Arillotta has joined other former mobsters trying to parlay their celebrity. Arillota explains his 'squeal point' and why he turned rat. “That was my squeal point. My squeal point was life,” Arillotta said of his move. “I got caught cheating (on his ex-wife). I was facing the death penalty, and I had to make a decision.”

“I’ve murdered. I’ve beaten. I’ve robbed. What else is there realistically for me to do, professionally, in this area?” he asks. Fotios 'Freddy' Geas and Emilio Fusco were part of a power play Arillotta was involved in. The pair later became his codefendants in the murder and racketeering prosecution that eviscerated the mob in Springfield. They were convicted of murdering both Bruno and Arillotta’s brother-in-law, Gary D. Westerman, the man who ended up in the grave they dug.

Mongrel Mob boss caged

Gangsters shouted and gestured in the streets outside a courthouse as Mongrel Mob boss Turanganui John Ormsby-Turner was driven away to begin a jail sentence of at least 126 months for the murder of a rival gang prospect. Head of the West Coast chapter, Turanganui John Ormsby-Turner, killed Rei Joseph Tumatauinga Maihi Marshall, a prospect for the Uru Taha gang, in a brutal slaying last August. Marshall, a 23-year-old Taranaki father-of-two, died after he was attacked with a claw hammer and stabbed with a large hunting knife. Ormsby-Turner, 26, admitted the murder and was sentenced in the High Court at New Plymouth.

Following the hearing, the gangsters shouted Sieg Heil as Ormsby-Turner was driven away to serve his life sentence. Tensions boiled over between the gang and supporters of the victim before police moved in to keep order.

The heightened security followed previous hearings for the case where the public gallery exploded into emotional scenes of chaos and shouting between angry gangsters.

B.C. co wants to avoid cutting old growth - Province says you pay

A B.C. company that wants to avoid logging sections of at-risk old growth was told by the Crown that it must pay to leave them standing. Logging began in two cut blocks north of Revelstoke in spring 2021, but Downie Timber halted operations when protesters blocked access to the sites. The company values its relationship with local First Nations and the public, and didn't want to jeopardize that by logging old growth areas that are sensitive to them.

Forests.BCTimberSalesHQOffice@gov.bc.ca

BC Timber Sales, the provincial entity responsible for auctioning harvesting rights for 20% of B.C.'s annual cut, said Downie Timber must fulfil its logging contract — or pay full stumpage fees for any trees left standing. That could be a significant amount. The company has spent $200k putting roads into the area. The company, trying to achieve a balanced conservation result that serves Canadians, stands to be penalized for it by bureacrats.

Mapping shows 50% of one of Downie's cut blocks north of Revelstoke overlaps with an old-growth deferral area. The second block also overlaps, to a lesser amount. There can't be much hope for what remains of old growth in British Columbia when it's guardian demands that it all be chopped down.

Late mob boss Vincent 'The Chin' Gigante's family feuding

Father Louis Gigante in 2003.

The grandnephew of 'The Chin' pilfered more than $500k from Building Management Associates in the Bronx, a company established in 1980 by the crime lord’s brother Father Louis Gigante according to a lawsuit. The priest hired Salvatore Gigante 18 years ago “out of the goodness of his heart,” lawyers said. “Sal had no real estate knowledge at the time. His college career focused on hammer throwing.” Louis Gigante died in October at age 89, leaving his $7m estate to son Gino — a 32-year-old whose lineage to the not-so-celibate priest emerged after his death.

Salvatore Gigante

“Father G was not even cold in his grave when Sal started plotting and scheming,” court papers charged.

Joseph 'Yellow Kid' Weil

Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil (July 1, 1875 – February 26, 1976) was one of the best known American con men of his era. During the course of his career, Weil is reputed to have stolen more than $8 million. "Each of my victims had larceny in his heart" Weil said. Some of Weil's successful cons include swindling the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini out of two million dollars, staging fake prize fights, selling "talking" dogs, and selling oil-rich land that he did not own. Weil spent a total of just six years in jail, most of it at Leavenworth Prison.

He passed himself off as a stockbroker, banker, physician, mining engineer, chemist, geologist, and land developer and originated or perfected numerous cons, including a phony bookie operation. Weil had many aliases and wore various disguises. A popular rumor claims that in 1889 Weil managed to sell a chicken to a wealthy prospector passing through Illinois for the price of a golden nugget. It is from this that the term 'Chicken Nugget' stems.

He claimed that he only cheated the dishonest rich. "Sure, I'm a con man, the best," he said. "But I've always taken from those who can afford the education." Weil lived in a Chicago nursing home his last years. A reporter attended his 99th birthday party. When the party was over, and he thought no one was watching, Weil swiped the extra candles. He died in 1976 at the age of 100.