Looking for stories of times you interacted with a criminal organization in any capacity. Were/are there any infamous locals frequently talked about in your area (please don’t dox yourself). Please give a genuine answer not a political stance. The only one I think I’ve had was a story I’ve told here before about having met an Aryan brotherhood guy when I was 12ish.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    2 months ago

    I worked for about a year with the son of a former mob boss from a big American city.

    Had to google the name as it wasn’t notorious or well known. Turns out he was one of the better bosses, and was known for keeping the peace and having a low profile.

    Still think he went to prison though

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I would say ‘Nice try FBI’, but this was back when I was a child, so fuckit, here goes…

    Back when I was only 7 years old (1989), living on a ~40 acre horse ranch/junkyard, my dad and his friend decided to teach me to drive a stick shift truck. Plenty of open space ya know, so yeah…

    Anyways, dad’s friend literally told me to drive through the pond in the back end of the property. It was only a couple feet deep anyways, so it shouldn’t have been any big deal right?

    Well, we did exactly that, drove through the pond, only for the truck tires to end up completely shredded. So like what the actual fuck?

    Apparently I ran over a bucket to a bulldozer buried in the pond.

    Well, as we came to find out later as time went on, the previous owner of the property had been stealing bulldozers and other county equipment, grinding off the serial numbers, repainting them, and selling them back to the county.

    Yeah that caught up with him, I never actually met the previous property owner, but that motherfucker also had people removed from the gene pool if they reported him…

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        You laugh, but that guy and his associates had all the equipment and then some to do such things. And apparently, snitches didn’t get stitches, they got a hole through the gut, tied to a cinder block, and thrown off a bridge…

        That’s the only reason dude got caught, one of the bodies got thrown into a shallow area and the next day the tide went low and was clearly visible to people that like to fish under that bridge.

  • Norin@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Fairly pleasant, TBH.

    I worked for a summer camp specifically for kids from some particularly dicey neighborhoods. Every so often I had to go set up shop in those neighborhoods to meet with parents and whatnot. Some guys in a local gang came to talk to me, learned I was there to offer something helpful to their kids, and from then out made sure I and my car were safe whenever I had to be in the area.

    Nice guys, at least in the capacity I knew them.

  • GCanuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 months ago

    I grew up in a town where it was general knowledge that retired Italian mobsters retired to.

    They made sure that town was clean, safe, and with very little crime. Chased out encroaching gangs and were generally an overall positive for the community.

    Since they stopped retiring there a few years ago, the town has gone to shit.

  • nocturne@slrpnk.net
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    2 months ago

    I was driving on I-70 and saw a member of an MC execute someone.

    One of my dad’s friends is in a local chapter of the same MC.

      • Carl@anarchist.nexusEnglish
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        2 months ago

        Motorcycle Club. It’s the “friendly” name for a biker gang. MCs swear up and down that they’re not gangs, because anti-gang laws allow authorities to take all kinds of extra gang busting measures against them that normally wouldn’t be allowed. It’s the biker gang equivalent of “we’re not a pyramid scheme, it’s multi-level marketing!”

  • Dr. Bob@lemmy.caEnglish
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    2 months ago

    I knew someone who lived in the same block as a well known motorcycle appreciation society. It was an incredibly clean and safe area. And the local dive bar was fun without a hint of shadiness or trouble. They did not shit where they ate.

  • charokol@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 months ago

    When my girlfriend’s dad was a kid he was once paid very good money to help unload crates off a boat and not ask questions

    Also, and even less directly relevant to my life, I live a couple blocks away from a very famous dead gangster’s old hideout. One of the members of the gang, who lived down the street from me, went on to have a fairly iconic role in a classic mob movie

  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.ukEnglish
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    2 months ago

    I went on a ‘Business Enterprise’ programme back in the UK in the very early ‘90s. Basically it was how to run a business 101. Six sessions on different things: accounting, HR, etc. etc.

    One of the other guys on the course turned out to be the son of the biggest coke dealer in the city.

    He was a nice kid. By the end of the course a bunch of us had bonded and someone invited us all to a house party.

    The son of the coke dealer turned up with a briefcase literally full of cocaine. That was a fucking awesome party, let me tell you.

  • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.onlineEnglish
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    2 months ago

    I worked near a clubhouse which used to be a lot more publicly active, in a trade that used to skew a lot more “rough”.

    I heard that they trafficked women and that they would come to the job site to “work”. There were people with serious drug problems who could not be let go because of their affiliation. This last one I find the hardest to believe for some reason but apparently people were pressured into buying t shirts? Like with the clubs name and logo. Seems strange.

  • d5273@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Studied abroad, made some friends. One asked me to ride along to his work. His work wasn’t ahhh, ‘above board’ and he had pissed off his boss, so he took me along as insurance that he wouldn’t be treated badly as their govt would be very pissed to have a foreigner disappear as well. Holy smokes, that was an intensive language immersion experience.

  • northernlights@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    I’ve dealt with a number of these who were coming from north African countries. Their hash was good, reasonably priced, and they were friendly. What can I say 🤷

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
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    2 months ago

    This one time, I tried telling some mob guy that he was funny.

    He did not take it well.

    But turns out he was just fuckin’ with me.