Organized Crime

His name rhymed with Al Capone and he came to a bad end behind the wheel of a rented white Volkswagen. Until the moment a bomb planted on his car exploded on a Tel Aviv street, mob boss Yaakov Alperon was living large. He and his Carmela Soprano-blond wife, Ahuva, were media darlings who even took part in a 2006 reality show in which a famous Israeli model moved in with their family.

When ecstasy first appeared on the drug scene, Israeli criminal networks were uniquely placed to take advantage. The drug flowed largely from underground labs in the Netherlands and Belgium, where Israeli mob families already had infrastructure in place for smuggling diamonds. As a hub for Israeli immigrants and a party town, Los Angeles instantly became one of the epicenters for the mid-'90s Israeli ecstasy invasion.

The bodies of a longtime Mexican army general and two associates were discovered early Tuesday on a highway to Cancun, the latest execution-style victims of the violence sweeping Mexico. Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello, who left the army last month and was working as a security consultant for the mayor of Cancun, is one of the highest-ranking officials killed in lawlessness fueled by drug trafficking and other gangland crime.

Heavily armed men killed three senior police officers and six other people here hours after a foiled armored car robbery, the latest attacks apparently triggered by a crackdown on police corruption and organized crime. Since Dec. 1, when Mayor Jorge Ramos took office promising to battle drug cartels, five officers, including three deputy chiefs, have been fatally shot gangland-style.

, a city forged on gambling, booze and flesh, has been strangely reluctant -- and perhaps a little nervous -- to make money off its mob roots. Until now. On a recent drizzly night, a small, white Vegas Mob Tour bus rumbled past aging strip malls, its passengers eager to see the spots where wiseguys were killed. Thug Jerry Lisner was repeatedly shot, strangled with an electrical cord and dumped in his swimming pool on a tree-lined street named Rawhide.

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey offered a stark assessment Wednesday of a rising threat from international organized crime, saying that a new breed of mobsters around the world was infiltrating strategic industries, providing logistical support to terrorists and becoming capable of "creating havoc in our economic infrastructure."

Mexican officials vowed Friday to press their war on organized crime despite the brazen killing a day earlier of a top federal police official by a gunman believed to be working for a drug cartel. "We will not be intimidated," federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said during an official memorial service in Mexico City for Edgar Millan Gomez, who was acting chief of a federal police agency.

Jimmy Casino, once Orange County's strip club king, was like a character out of a James Ellroy novel, a slick-talking swindler who met his end with a bullet to the back of the head. The execution-style 1987 killing at his Buena Park condominium was widely regarded as Orange County's most notorious unsolved murder. Until now, authorities say. Richard C. Morris Jr.

In a society otherwise marked by gentle formality and good manners, the Japanese crime syndicates known as the yakuza have for decades been linked to murder, money laundering, racketeering and pornography. In recent years, they have expanded to lucrative real estate and stock market scams, according to Japanese media reports and yakuza experts. The yakuza, slang for the losing hand in a card game, have an estimated 85,000 organized crime members and associates.

An influential U.S. senator sent a series of letters Friday seeking additional details about four liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center involving patients who were suspected members or associates of Japanese organized crime groups. "While surgeons do not seek to pass moral judgment on the patients they treat, Americans hope at the very least that foreign criminal figures wait in line along with the rest of us," Sen. Charles E.