Organized Crime

Reporting from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico -- The mayor had good news: A notorious thug from one of the drug cartels had been found killed. Hector "El Negro" Saldana would no longer menace the people of San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico. Trouble was, Saldana's body hadn't yet been discovered when Mayor Mauricio Fernandez made the announcement with a flourish at his swearing-in ceremony in October. How did Fernandez know about Saldana's demise hours before investigators found the body stuffed in a car hundreds of miles away in Mexico City?

ROME - A bomb exploded at the entrance of a high school in southern Italy named for the wife of a slain anti-Mafia judge, killing a 16-year-old girl and injuring at least four people as students were arriving at school for Saturday classes. Police were investigating the possibility of organized-crime involvement in the attack in the Adriatic port city of Brindisi, but authorities said it was too early to exclude other possibilities. They noted that the school is named for Francesca Morvillo, the wife of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

A young man who once toted a book bag and attended classes at Cal State Los Angeles testified in federal court Tuesday that he authorized the executions of as many as 40 people as a rising star in the Mexican Mafia. Max Torvisco, 24, took the stand as the government's first witness in the trial of 11 suspected Mexican Mafia members and associates, describing the organization as the "gang of all gangs."

Javier Guzman, a 25-year-old industrial engineer, eased his SUV toward the curb on a recent Sunday as a masked state police officer in the middle of the road signaled him to pull over. Guzman rolled down his window, greeting the officer with a " buenas tardes . " "Do you live here? Where are you coming from?" the officer asked. "I live here, this car is mine," Guzman replied. He had nothing to hide, yet began coughing nervously. The officer, dressed in black, from combat boots to ski mask, circled the vehicle.

Reputed Mafia boss John Gotti said of one potential victim, "He's gotta get whacked," and of another, "He's gonna die because he refused to come in when I called," according to transcripts of FBI tapes released Friday. In one key transcript, Gotti is heard denying involvement in the 1985 slaying of "Big Paul" Castellano, a murder that he is accused of ordering to seize control of the Gambino crime family.

Amid sobs from some relatives, three more members of the Mexican Mafia were sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole after their conviction this year on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. A fourth man, Joe "Shakey Joe" Hernandez, 43, received a lighter prison term, 32 years, partly because he is only an associate and not a full-fledged member of the secretive prison gang. U.S. District Judge Ronald S. W.

Is there anything that could persuade muckraking Tijuana journalist Jesus Blancornelas to lay down his pen? A nearly successful assassination attempt by the Tijuana drug cartel failed to silence him. He waves away the inconvenience of life with 13 army bodyguards as just another bizarre plot twist in his episodic career.

Ever since Al Capone bought a mansion on Miami's Palm Island in 1928, South Florida has been a destination for organized-crime figures who want to relax and do a little business. The rackets have evolved over the years -- loan-sharking, extortion and gambling have largely given way to stock scams, money-laundering and white-collar fraud. And the gangsters of yore have been joined by rivals from Russia, Israel and South America. But the culture of greed and violence has remained constant.

LAPD detectives are investigating whether the shooting of two men at a North Hollywood synagogue in October is the work of Israeli-connected organized crime. The Oct. 29 shooting ignited fear that it was a hate crime, but Los Angeles police officials quickly ruled that out. In the last few weeks, LAPD investigators have concentrated their resources on the idea that the shootings were designed to silence someone. "It is something we are looking at, but we have made no definitive conclusions," Deputy Chief Michael Downing, head of the LAPD's Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, told The Times.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered a crackdown on organized crime in Israel, signaling a new focus on domestic issues while he prepares to seek reelection to office as head of the new Kadima party. Crime has risen in Israel in recent years, with gangs involved in illegal gambling and trafficking in drugs and sex workers. Meanwhile, Sharon's aides said he would undergo a heart procedure Thursday to mend a small hole that apparently led to his recent stroke.

SAN DIEGO - For years, Benjamin Arellano Felix eluded U.S. law enforcement while running a Mexican drug cartel that terrorized rivals and poured hundreds of tons of cocaine into the country. So when the handcuffed kingpin arrived in San Diego aboard a government plane last year, U.S. authorities gathered on the tarmac, sharing hugs and handshakes as he was handed over to his longtime pursuers. But the sense of triumph has turned to disappointment in some quarters as Arellano Felix approaches his judgment hour in court Monday.

Britain's bestselling tabloid on Monday launched a blistering attack on the police for arresting five of its journalists over the weekend in an investigation of media corruption and unethical practices undertaken as a result of the country's phone hacking scandal. Scotland Yard is treating reporters at Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper "like members of an organized crime gang," said Trevor Kavanagh, the paper's associate editor. He lashed out at what he called a police "witch hunt," warned that Britain was falling behind former Soviet bloc countries in terms of press freedom and criticized police raids on journalists' homes during which officers sifted through "intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents.

The Mob Museum opening in Las Vegas on Feb. 14 has a message for wannabe brides and grooms: Be the first to set foot inside the museum -- and get married too. Seven couples will be selected randomly to tie the knot or renew vows at the courthouse-turned-museum at 300 Stewart Ave. Couples 21 and older have until 11:59 PST tonight (Tuesday) to enter the Married at the Mob Museum  contest. Other perks: airfare for two from a U.S. location to Las Vegas, a two-night stay at the El Cortez Hotel (once owned by mob leader Bugsy Siegel )

Sixty reputed members of an Iraqi drug-trafficking organization in El Cajon have been arrested and authorities seized more than $630,000 in cash, 3,500 pounds of marijuana, dozens of high-powered firearms and several explosive devices, law enforcement officials said Thursday. The organization was run out of a social club and has suspected links to the ruthless Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and an Iraqi organized crime syndicate in Detroit, according to law enforcement officials. The social club, located on East Main Street, has been a "hub of criminal activity conducted by Iraqi organized crime," El Cajon police Chief Pat Sprecco said.

Police in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, struggled Friday to quell a wave of violence that has claimed at least 80 lives in the last four days and left sections of the fear-ridden city largely deserted. Karachi, a port city of 18 million, has long been plagued by bloodshed stemming from links between political leaders and organized crime gangs. Fueling the violence are continuing battles among rival gangs for prime real estate, which can yield millions of dollars in profits.

During Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's trip to Guatemala this week, the governments of Central America will unveil their strategy for fighting entrenched organized crime in the region. The meeting is meant to raise the profile of the isthmus' severely deteriorated security situation and marshal international resources to the task of improving it. The stakes are high. Central America's drug-related security plight is as grave as Mexico's. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have violence rates second only to those of active war zones.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service said today organized criminal gangs that spill across the nation's borders are on the rise, trafficking in drugs and engaging in loan-sharking, gambling, extortion and murder-for-hire. Levels of criminal activity by groups ranging from the Japanese Yakuza to Jamaican crime networks "appear to be escalating dramatically," the INS concluded in a report.

The brown Mercedes without license plates slowed on a downtown street, and the driver called out to a teenage girl. "He pointed at me and said, 'You, come closer,' " recalled the 13-year-old ethnic Albanian. "I didn't go near but said, 'What do you want?' He said, 'Don't be a bad girl.' I said, 'What?' Then he rolled up the window and left." The incident here in Kosovo's capital lasted only a moment. But it was one that could strike fear into any parent's heart.

They fly low and slow over the border, their wings painted black and motors humming faintly under moonlit skies. The pilots, some armed in the open cockpits, steer the horizontal control bar with one hand and pull a latch with the other, releasing 250-pound payloads that land with a thud, leaving only craters as evidence of another successful smuggling run. Mexican organized crime groups, increasingly stymied by stepped-up enforcement on land, have...

Reporting from Las Vegas — For years, this town did its best to ignore its ties to organized crime, to the inconvenient fact that if Mt. Rushmore were in Vegas, the faces etched in granite would include Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who financed the Flamingo, or Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the surprisingly powerful "food and beverage director" of the Stardust. But Las Vegas is well versed in indulging in too much of a good thing, the evidence painted in the bloodshot eyes of the tourists who wend their way back down the 15 on a Sunday or in the glut of homes and casinos that helped drive the economy to a standstill in the last few years.