 | Hells Angels Phillip O'Shea had another appearance in front of a judge and the result is another 6 months in the big house. O'Shea will be 'on ice' until mid-2021.  |  |
 | HA heavyweight Phillip O'Shea has been in jail since January and will be eligible for release in October on trafficking charges. O'Shea unsuccessfully sued Northern Territory police in 2018 over his violent arrest in a separate case.  |  O'Shea was found guilty on the drug charges, as well as assaulting police. |
 | NTR Metals is the largest money-laundering prosecution involving precious metals in U.S. history. “The scope of the conspiracy is enormous,” prosecutors told a judge during a hearing in Miami in 2017. Federal prosecutors charged 3 NTR traders with money laundering, saying the three men bought $3.6 billion of illegal gold from criminal groups in Latin America. The scandal shut down NTR and cost its Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal, the ability to trade gold on bullion and commodity exchanges. |  Prosecutors claimed the gold traders, who eventually pleaded guilty, fueled “illegal gold mining, foreign bribery [and] narcotics trafficking.” |
 Pedro Pérez Miranda - Peter Ferrari | In 2012, the company did little business in Latin America. But the next year, NTR struck a rich vein, becoming the largest U.S. importer of Peruvian gold with $980m worth of deals. They did it with help from Peruvian businessman Pedro Pérez Miranda, who is suspected of laundering massive amounts of drug money through the gold trade.
Over the past two decades, as the U.S. war on drugs undercut the cash flow of narco-traffickers, dealers diversified into Latin America’s gold industry. By using drug profits to mine and sell gold, criminals can launder staggering amounts of money. |  In 2013, NTR went on to buy $400 million in gold from Ferrari |
 | NTR’s Peruvian operations collapsed at the end of 2013 when police raided a storage facility outside Lima holding gold that belonged to Ferrari and others. Agents seized $18.8m worth of gold. But the party wasn’t over — it moved. In 2014, NTR was smuggling gold across the border to Ecuador and Bolivia. |  Illegal mining has devastated the rainforests of Colombia, Peru, and other gold-producing nations. |
| When local governments in those countries also began cracking down the party moved again, this time to Colombia. In 2015, NTR’s imports from Colombia soared to $722m. That accounted for more than half of the country’s gold exports to the US. Colombia exported 64 tons of gold in 2016, much of it to the United States. That same year, Colombia’s large-scale, legal mining operations produced only eight tons. A large part of the gap between what Colombia’s big mines produce and what the country exports is unlicensed and untaxed gold — often unearthed at any cost by operations controlled by narcos. |
 | Cartel associates pose as traders to buy and mine gold. Cocaine profits are seed money. They sell the metal through front companies to refineries. Once the deal is made, the cartels have turned their dirty gold into clean cash. To the outside world, they’re not drug dealers; they’re gold traders. |  |
 | Last week the Sinaloa cartel’s top boss, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, declared that wholesale prices were going to increase for meth. “Mayo sent this announcement saying, ‘Everyone is going to sell a pound of crystal for 15,000 pesos ($600) from now on because of the shortage. Before that, it was 2,500 pesos ($100),” The stated reason for the price hike is the coronavirus pandemic. The raw chemical ingredients used for manufacturing meth and fentanyl are sourced from China, and supply chains have been disrupted. |  Cooks, who usually keep a 30 day supply, are already running low on some of the essential materials they need. |
 | The price of acetone, which is used to manufacture heroin, has more than doubled over the past 15 days, climbing from around $60 for 20 litres to $150. Rumors suggest that a kilo of fentanyl, which used to sell wholesale in Sinaloa for 870,000 pesos ($35k), now costs 1 million pesos ($42k). |  |
 | Joland Giwa, 30, arrived in the UK when he was aged 10, and grew up terrorizing the streets of Croydon, south London. He was jailed for 27 months in February 2009 for a string of robberies and thefts. Attempts to deport him to Africa – Giwa is thought to be from either Nigeria or Sierra Leone – were frustrated because no country would take him. He was jailed for seven years in 2015 for a violent robbery. He was released from prison on June 2019. Giwa has again been sentenced to a lengthy prison term after he admitted possessing heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine with intent to supply. Giwa was caught with drugs with a street value of £4,700, £1,300 in cash and three mobile phones. |  |
| A year is concurrent with a 47-month federal prison term he’s already serving. | Bill K. Kapri, 'Kodak Black' is back in a federal penitentiary in Kentucky after being sentenced in State Supreme Court in Lockport for gun possession.  |
| The 90-plus minute stop violated any number of the biker's rights says Mills. He claims he was treated like a criminal and was harassed for his association to Hells Angels. | Full patch Anthony Mills is suing after he was pulled over by cops for speeding the night of April 8, 2018. He was ticketed for driving 20-25 mph over the speed limit.  |
| An undercover agent in an investigation that resulted in charges being filed last year in the murders of two high profile Montreal Mafia leaders has been charged with uttering threats. The unnamed informant has a lengthy criminal record and was referred to as a co-conspirator in Rocco Sollecito’s murder. A press ban has been applied to all involved. |
 | Four people face charges in Project Préméditer. Jonathan Massari, 38, and Dominico Scarfo, 47, are charged with the first-degree murders of Sollecito and Giordano. Marie-Joseé Viau, 45, and Guy Dion, 48 are charged with the first-degree murders of the Falduto brothers. They were killed in June 2016. |  |
 A light plane, described as a "Cessna-206 type," landed, and within 10 minutes everyone was gone. | Canadian miner Alamos Gold Inc. reports that a group of armed robbers intercepted gold dore bars on the runway at its Mulatos mine site in Mexico. The Mulatos mine is an open pit gold mine located in Sonora about 200km east of Hermosillo city. Five heavily armed robbers subdued security guards who were loading the bars for transport on a plane. |  |
 | No one was hurt. The take is 2,600 ounces of dore bars, which are around 80% gold. That would make the heist worth a cool $3.2m. A mine owned by Mineria Penmont, a subsidiary of Fresnillo, was robbed a few weeks ago. Armored trucks transporting ingots were attacked and robbed by armed men in Caborca, Sonora. |  It was not the first highway robbery of precious metals mined by Penmont, 47 doré bars, 722 kgs, were stolen in November. |
 R. Kelly has asked to be released from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic. | Thousands of inmates are pushing to get out from behind bars, citing the coronavirus. Killers, drug traffickers, gang members to mobsters, fraudsters and accused rapists are making a bid to get out of the clink. Lawyers are rushing forward with long lists of medical ailments of their clients. |  Former state Senate Majority Leader, Dean Skelos 72, is serving four years on public corruption charges. |
 'The Proud Peacock' Syrian-born arms dealer Monzer Al Kassar sold weapons to terrorists. He wants a compassionate release. |  Former EMT Frantz Petion allegedly raped a 10-year-old Queens girl in her bedroom in 2018. |  Juan Angel Napout is a Paraguayan FIFA official busted on federal racketeering charges in a soccer bribery scandal. |
 |  Vincent Asaro, the 85-year-old who beat the rap in the infamous 1978 Lufthansa case. |  Gambino soldier John Matera conspired to whack a government witness in 1998. He is suffering from COVID-19 |
 | 64 people were charged in Dec as part of a massive investigation specifically intended to dismantle the Latin Kings' East Coast leadership. Michael Cecchetelli, aka 'King Merlin,' of Springfield, is among those charged. Cecchetelli has the title of Supreme East Coast Regional Overseer. Despite his Italian heritage, Cecchetelli, 40, has risen to the upper echelons of the gang. Known as 'King Casper' he is already facing a murder count. The Latin Kings are the oldest and the largest predominantly Latino gang in the US. |  |
 | John “Junior” Gotti, 56, is under investigation for his meetings with Cecchetelli. The meetings involved blood ties with Gotti, Cecchetelli and David “Fat Chicky” Cecchetelli. 'Fat Chicky' is a longtime Genovese family soldier. According to the FBI "The Latin Kings have evolved from a traditional street gang to a large-scale criminal enterprise superimposed with Mafia style rule." That means robbery, assault and murder. Among the many charges Cecchetelli is facing is trying to kill two fellow gang members in bad standing who disrespected his leadership. |  |
 | Egbert Joseph was born on December 7, 1876, in Christiansted, St. Croix, Danish West Indies, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands. Holstein and his mother moved to New York in 1894. He joined the U.S. Navy for the Spanish-American war and served on the U.S.S. Saratoga. He studied the numbers game and made his own. Called 'Bolito,' players would pick a three-number combination, which Holstein paid out 600 to one, while the real odds of any number were 999 to one. His profits were enormous and by 1920 he had become famous in the New York underworld as the “Bolito King.” |  |
 | In 1928 Holstein was kidnapped and beaten by five white men who demanded $50k. They released him three days later with no ransom paid. It emerged that gangster Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer was behind the kidnapping. Schultz wanted to take over the city’s numbers racket, and he succeeded. In 1935, the same year Schultz was gunned down, Holstein was sent to prison to 3 years on gambling charges. Holstein died in Harlem on April 5, 1944. |  |
 | A court in Guinea-Bissau has handed record jail terms to two suspects accused of trafficking almost two tonnes of cocaine into the country. Ringleaders, identified as Colombian Ricardo Ariza Monje, 'Ramon', and Braima Seidi Ba, were each sentenced to 16 years in prison. |  Others received jail terms of between four and 14 years. |
 | The tiny West Africa nation of 1.8m people has for years been used as a staging post in the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America to Europe. In the past, the military has been heavily involved in the country’s drug trade. |
 | A thief broke into a home in Ste-Dorothée by smashing a window. The crime would have been unthinkable when Rizzuto was at the apex of his power. When a SUV that belonged to someone Rizzuto knew was stolen, the Mob boss located it within hours. |  The Rizzutos moved into the house during the summer of 2013, just months after he was released from a penitentiary in the U.S. |
 | Rizzuto served a 10-year prison term for having taken part in the murders of three Bonnano capos, who were killed in New York in 1981. Rizzuto died of cancer on Dec. 23, 2013, just months after the couple moved into their new home. |  |
