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Suspected head of $21B crime syndicate may be world’s most innovative drug lord
- 1cvmask 5y agoIsn't the worlds most successful drug lord ever the CIA. They sold cocaine and the journalist Gary Webb who uncovered it was attacked by the CIA mouthpieces of corporate journalists and corporate media and "suicideded" himself. He shot himself in the head twice to succeed in the "suicide". Afghanistan after first overturning the Taliban had the biggest increase ever in drug production ever when the CIA was running the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance_(book) https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/ https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-m...
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads on generic tangents and definitely not generic flamewar tangents, regardless of what the CIA has done or you feel the CIA has done. This kind of thing leads to predictably low-quality threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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- jiveturkey 5y agoyep, came here to say similar
- withjive 5y agoCIA & Pablo. Exactly.
- arcticbull 5y agoHow do you measure and calculate their success to compare against for instance Tse Chi Lop? Are there market size or valuation estimates? Obviously they have sold drugs before, so a quantification exercise would be interesting.
- kodah 5y agoI'm tracking on your first paragraph. Your second is a little confusing to me. I went on opium interdiction missions in Southern Afghanistan. The Taliban runs its own opium ring down there to fund it's activities. I'm not even sure it'd be fair to say the CIA was "running the country". They trained Afghan special forces, whom I only ever saw once and that was near Kajaki Dam. The people who were digging up weapons caches, setting up field hospitals, etc that we fought in the area while doing opium interdiction didn't look anything like Afghan special forces, much less act like them.
- fedreserved 5y agohttps://youtu.be/0vOtB46ncyU https://youtu.be/0vOtB46ncyU Breaking Points did a great piece showing how the Cia still controlled the afghan drug trade
- pseudotrash 5y agoFrom your first Wikipedia link ... that show is pretty good: > Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in Los Angeles in 1983. The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. The series follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps to secure guns for the Contras. The character reporter Irene Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for the real life Gary Webb. Although I am not to sure if the suicide wasn't really a suicide. On the other hand a group that is known to have done worse than this it doesn't sound implausible.
- knownjorbist 5y agoIsn't the Afghanistan drug production thing post-9/11 widely discredited at this point?
- paul_f 5y agoQueen Victoria was the largest drug lord in history by many accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
- neither_color 5y agoNope that would be the British East India company, they make the CIA look like street dealers. The EIC literally went to war against a dynastic empire in order to sell opium, and won. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
- tclancy 5y agoNot disagreeing about the CIA here but there was a recent r/askhistorians about Webb’s death and it appears multiple gunshot suicides aren’t that uncommon. Plus his wife doesn’t think it was anything but. Asserting things like this undercuts the point.
- vadfa 5y agoWhy is it that every time I see an amount of money like that I know they've pulled it out of their asses?
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- kasey_junk 5y agoI can’t wait for this season if “The Wire”.
- boldslogan 5y agoIt is a shame he just doesnt come clean and write a book. Could auction a nice movie deal out of it at least.
- yaseer 5y agoWhen I see a number like $21 billion, I can't help but think of all the economic and social good from drugs being regulated, like Cannabis, Tobacco and Prostitution. That's a lot of taxation money lost, a lot of policing wasted, and a lot of lives lost needlessly.
- jahnu 5y agoI hear you, but... we can't even properly tax major corps selling coffee yet :(
- lapetitejort 5y agoPerfect is the enemy of the good. Let's just crack open those revenue streams a bit.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoWe do tax them with VAT, which brings a LOT of money. We could, and should tax them more on earnings too, despite loop holes and tax heavens. But even if you could just get VAT on drugs and prostitution, that would be HUGE. Not to mention profits would go to legal businesses, which would stimulate the economy, instead of going into criminals pockets, which hurts society.
- cgh 5y agoVery difficult to legalize and tax meth, which is what this guy mostly sold. It’s hugely addictive and harmful, and you can make it in a home lab. I was shocked to read in the article that one in seven Australians have tried it. Is that true? That’s a real crisis if so.
- qaq 5y agoThought this was about big pharma based on the title
- tpmx 5y agoI know, comments on web site design are boring... but that very large body text font size (25px) was supremely annoying. I don't really understand why you would do something like that. I've been seeing it relatively frequently recently.
- cletus 5y agoThere's a National Geographic documentary series called Drugs, Inc. [1] that I find fascinating. Let's set aside what an abject failure the so-called War on Drugs has been in the US and the violence of the drug trade and just appreciate the market economics for a second. One episode listed all the stages coca leaves took to becoming crack cocaine. Processing in jungle labs, transportation to smugglers, further processing, flying to Mexico, entering the US and distribution. And each stage there is loss to law enforcement, rival gangs, theft, etc and that loss rate is reflected in how the price jumps at each stage. In another, it detailed how meth (IIRC) entered the US primarily in Phoenix. As a result, Phoenix has (so the show said) the cheapest meth in the US. For every 1000 miles you radiated away from Phoenix, the price doubled. To me it was fascinating to see people who generally had little education, came from terrible backgrounds and grew up amidst crime and violence talk about the math of distance and price and how it impacted his distribution organization. It's sad to see someone who actually has a talent for hustling and basically sales be lost to the drug world. This is yet another reason why I think the "are you a felon?" question should basically be outlawed in the US. Additionally you see how organizations have evolved to insulate themselves from disruption (from rivals or law enforcement). Most people know very little and certainly not the big picture. Merchandise frequently changes hands. I don't know what the solution here is. I fully support legalization of recreational cannabis in any world where alcohol consumption is legal. I certainly don't think we should be sending people to prison for possession. At the same time, you have cities like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco that are literally being destroyed by non-policing of drugs and small property crime. But the US prison industrial complex is and always has been a direct attack on the poor and minorities. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugs,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugs,_Inc.
- ncallaway 5y ago> This is yet another reason why I think the "are you a felon?" question should basically be outlawed in the US I mostly agree with this. First, you shouldn’t be allowed to ask about arrests, indictments, or other form of accusations. You should only be allowed to ask about convictions. Further, those questions should be limited to convictions for crimes directly related to the job at hand, and should be time limited. For example, if you’re hiring an accountant that will be managing the organization’s cash, I think you should be allowed to ask if the applicant has been convicted in the last N (let’s say 10) years of embezzlement of an employers funds. But that’s it. No questions about drug convictions, petty cash theft convictions, or anything else.
- paulpauper 5y agothough it was about the sackler family
- dillondoyle 5y agoi wish. in that case, this criminal would get 5 years to pay restitution - with market access open to sell even more meth to make up the penalty in excess profit!
- feviskus 5y ago@dang wheres the comment about c i a's relations regarding drug money? why has the comment been removed rather than downvoted?
- gjs278 5y agohe must be a cia shill
- ASalazarMX 5y agoI saw it disappear too. Maybe the author edited it? Edit: it wasn't important or insightful, other states have used drug traffic for profit in the past, like the Opium Wars.
- dang 5y agoIf you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29087635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29087635, I collapsed it for reasons described in the thread. Please don't break the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) by posting like this. If you want to ask us something, the way to do that is to email hn@ycombinator.com. I only saw your comment here randomly, and in any case it's off topic.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago"legalization of casinos killed Asian organized crime in Toronto. He estimates there was an 80 per cent decline in street-level crime when underground gaming houses dissolved." The 20% of crime that is left I assume is drugs-related
- whimsicalism 5y agoI would love to have a list somewhere of the largest criminal "supersyndicates." They have to be known if they are so large, no? This one would probably have been up there, if not at the top.
- patrickk 5y agoThe three main Italian mafia groups are up there, ’Ndrangheta, Comorra and La Costra Nostra. Their reach is simply massive, as is their revenue. Yet they're not well known (even in Italy, according to a northern Italian colleague) and certainty not in the rest of Europe, despite a string of businesses in many industries across the continent. Their reach must be quite a bit larger than the "five families" of New York, yet they're much less well known. > The ’Ndrangheta – based in the southern region of Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot – is reputed to be one of the richest and most feared criminal organisations in the world. A study by the Demoskopita Research Institute in 2013 estimated its financial strength as more than that of Deutsche Bank and McDonald’s combined, with an annual turnover of €53bn (£44bn). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/27/uk-to-come-under-scrutiny-in-italys-largest-mafia-trial-in-decades https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/27/uk-to-come-und... Another good book is "Gomorrah" about the Comorra mafia[1]. Their reach is simply staggering across Europe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(book) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1105956.Gomorrah https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1105956.Gomorrah
- whimsicalism 5y agoYes, I was always curious how large the modern mafia is. My impression from recent busts seems to be very large in Europe (based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat) and close to non-existent in the states.
- grae_QED 5y agoWow, what a fascinating article. It still blows my mind that annually his organization made seven times more than the Sinaloa Cartel. I think the last paragraph says it all: >What gave traditional organized crime its strength in the past—the violence, the control of territory, the ethnic loyalty and defined hierarchies—are the heart of its weakness in the present. Tse had a better system. Instead of ethnic loyalty, transnational and inter-organizational co-operation. Instead of territory, logistics. Instead of hierarchy, metrics. Instead of centralized control, connections. Tse Chi Lop is easily the most significant criminal in Toronto’s history, and he represents, in an entirely diseased way, a perverse triumph of the city. His vast criminal organization flourished through open-mindedness and entrepreneurship, by creating markets and exploiting them in a spirit of eager globalization and cosmopolitanism. Imagine how much money criminal syndicates could make if they took notes from this guy and all worked together.
- antupis 5y agoThing is that at short term much easier to shoot rival drug dealer, than build robust logistic system. Same kinda thing happens at legit business where it is much easier and cheaper just bullying rivals out of market(lobby/sue etc) than build actual moat. Things of course change when competitor comes back and has actual moat and nearly unlimited resources.
- aaron695 5y ago> Suspected head of $21B crime syndicate may be world’s most innovative drug lord What's amazing it 1/3 of that money could solve World Hunger - https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger-wfp-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger... It says a lot that the United Nations World Food Programme wouldn't got to someone like that and offer immunity, in exchange to solve the most complex and pressing issue of our time.
- franky47 5y ago> He achieved the size of Sam Gor not by murder and torture, but by industrializing his business, reducing the cost per unit, providing an excellent product at a fair price, and establishing well-maintained networks of key partnerships. Gustavo Fring would be proud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Fring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Fring
- rendall 5y agoSuch an amazing story. I wonder how much of it is accurate, or true?
- chadlavi 5y agoThe world's most innovative drug lord is probably someone who hasn't been caught!
- fleddr 5y agoA little personal anecdote on how the supply chain has "professionalized" here in the Netherlands. My friend, a boring dad, found an envelope filled with coke on his doormat. Soon after, his neighbor ringed the door and apologized for the incorrect delivery. Apparently you no longer have to go to some shady area at night, you just place your order on WhatsApp and you get it by mail. Indeed, Amazon level convenience. When I was younger, our idea of fun was to get drunk, which is pretty costly once you build up a tolerance for alcohol. These days, youngsters pop a cheap party pill (XTC) for 5 euro and that's about all they consume for the night. Late night cab drivers used to complain how these drunk kids would puke in the car, now they shit in the car instead. Even in the very nice peaceful town where I live, street corners show piles of "laughing gas" capsules on the floor, which is the new thing. All of this said, the truly hard drugs like heroine, crack, meth do not seem commonly used here in the general population. Back on point, I've never understood the appeal of being a drugs kingpin. It never ends well. You can never check out and retire. You have enemies everywhere. You're always on the run. It doesn't matter whether you control a revenue of 1 billion or 10 billion in any practical sense. It must be a power trip I don't understand.