In my naive denial, I had wanted to see him as a hapless ne’er-do-well, a nonconformist with a streak of dishonesty. I liked to think of him as a latter-day Robin Hood. Now I knew that wasn’t true.

John Franzese Jr. helped send his father, notorious Colombo family mobster Sonny Franzese, to prison. Then he turned up in Indianapolis.

It didn't matter if these clubs were in Cleveland, Portland, Corpus Christi or Baton Rouge—if it was a nightclub, the owners were the Mob. For a good forty years the Mob controlled American show business.

A mobster, a family and the crime that won’t let them go.

The city that fell in love with the mob.

The battle to make The Godfather pitted director Francis Ford Coppola against producers including Robert Evans, and the production itself against the real life mob.

The intricate dance between highly organized ultras fan organizations, the teams they support, and the mafia for control of the center of curva and the lucrative ticket-touting opportunities that come with it.

Maurice Lerner missed his shot at the majors and landed in the Rhode Island mafia.

They were florists working in Amsterdam’s largest flower market. They were also members of one of the most powerful arms of the Italian mafia. An investigation into how organized crime has gone global.

Between 1937 and 1973, Earl Johnson served out the sentences on nine felonies, worked for Charlie “Cherry Nose” Gio, became friends with a Soviet spy, and tried to kill “Joe Cargo” Valachi of the Cosa Nostra with a poison dart.

They were the New York crew that once pulled off the Lufthansa heist, one of the biggest thefts in American history and the basis for Goodfellas. Nearly 40 years later, most are dead. The survivors are old, broke, and snitching.

Tracing Europe’s migrant crisis to organized crime.

Nearing the end of his career, a Canadian tycoon named Michael DeGroote went for one last deal, investing $100 million to build a Las Vegas in the Dominican Republic. His partners? Two brothers with a criminal past, a con man and an old friend with close ties to the mob.

Since exposing the Neapolitan mafia by publishing Gomorrah at age 27, Roberto Saviano has lived for nearly a decade under armed guard, shuttling between anonymous hotels and army barracks.

How the feds went after Thick Neck, Guilty, Stomper, Gunner, Lucky, Menace, and the rest of the Amernian mob in Los Angeles.

How Bernardo Provenzano, “boss of all bosses of the Sicilian Mafia” and fugitive for more than 40 years, got caught.

On the Boston mobster’s exes.

The enduring system of organized crime in Naples.

How an Italian thug looted MGM, brought Credit Lyonnais to its knees, and made the Pope cry.

Steven Seagal spent a few years in Japan and  returned to open a dojo in L.A.. Jules Nasso was the wiseguy producer behind all of Seagal’s hits. When it all fell apart, Seagal reputedly offered money for a contract killing, and Nasso may have been caught on tape arranging to extort Seagal through the Gambino Family.

An 1992 interview with Martin Scorsese. On Goodfellas, “I figured to do it as if it was one long trailer, where you just propel the action and you get an exhilaration, a rush of the lifestyle.”