What cities in the south would be considered major hubs of organized crime activity presently? Speaking activities to groups or both.

I would say Atlanta would be in that mix. Tampa, St.Pete, Miami. Maybe even New Orleans to a extent.

Oddly, you never hear about OC down South. So im curious as to what this thread will dig up. I think its a given that Mexican and Columbian Cartels are down there, Russian mob and of course NYC families have crews in Florida too. I am just speculating though..

Anyone know whose got crews in Florida from NYC? Up-to-date by any chance...

NYC crews in Tampa and Miami. The only other of group I can think of in Florida are Russians.

Mexican groups are active in Texas, most notable are Barrio Azteca, Texas Syndicate and Los Zetas. Colombian and Cuban groups are still active in Florida. They aren't as aggressive as they used to be, but they're still around over there and probably won't ever go away.
Down South outlaw motorcycle gangs are deeply rooted. Outlaws MC have their main operations in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee. Bandidos MC have their roots in Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. The so-called 'Dixie mafia' -a term to describe organized crime groups in the South- is probably connected to are even a term for the activities of the OMG's.

But since I'm not from the USA, I can only base this on the reports I've read (which aren't always that trustworthy, even if they're from the FBI). Would be interesting to hear someone from the South on this topic.

Dixie Mafia used to be big around northern Alabama, Mississippi, and SW Tennessee for the most part. Remember Buford Pusser? Walking Tall? He spent almost his whole career fighting these guys. They weren't very well organized, if at all, and seemed to operate in small, semi-independent bands in small towns where the local police force could be easily corrupted. Whorehouses, illegal stills, gambling, and some drugs were the main rackets these guys were involved in. Occasionally, they would have to kill someone and Kirksey Nix, purportedly the leader of the Dixie Mafia, was already doing life for killing someone in a robbery and ordering a hit on a judge from jail when he conceived a scam from prison designed to make him enough money to bribe the parole board. He and his associates placed ads in gay magazines and eventually gathered a couple hundred thousand dollars from the scam before it was found out.

I don't really know much about current goings-on; most of it is drug-oriented such as family-operated marijuana or prescription drug rings, cheap stuff that goes over well with country folk. I know a guy from high school doing 15-20 in federal for running an interstate oxy ring.

By South does that include the Southwest? If so I would vote for Phoenix. It is one of the largest hubs for the cartels and it is one of the largest wholesale drug markets in the USA and I would argue the world.

You have the cartels there, traditional African American and Hispanic Gangs, Outlaw motorcycle clubs, Asian Gangs, the Aryan Brotherhood, Eurasian OC, and some would say even some residual LCN activity (I do not think there is any personally) as Louis Caruso a Los Angeles LCN capo has an air condition business there as well as some Chicago associates. Basically every major OC group currently has or has had representatives there. Just my two cents.

No, your in the West. Starting with Texas and Oklahoma then east across and up to Maryland is the South.

Dewitt Dawson
September 10, 1997
Dawson, once the crime ''Kingpin of North Alabama'' and leader of the notorious Dawson Gang, died Saturday of a heart attack in Leighton, Ala. He was 58. Dawson was accused of running a crime ring known as the Dawson Gang that began operating in north Alabama, northeast Mississippi and southwest Tennessee during the 1960s. Dawson spent a total of 16 years in prison for bootlegging, bank robbery, income-tax evasion and counterfeiting. He was linked to illegal gambling operations and accused of planning several bank robberies, although he was convicted of only one bank robbery.

Dawson pretty much had Huntsville in his back pocket. He had a safehouse there before he was locked up. The Bandidos and Outlaws have many chapters in the south and I heard that the Hell's Angeles bought property in Birmingham, and is an open secret, as both the Bandidos and Outlaws object to them having a chapter in the city, and rumor is that members of both gangs are to shoot any Hells Angeles flying their colors in Birmingham. The two big cities where you will find OC, are Atlanta and Birmingham and not just talking about those of Italian ancestry.

Devils Disciples are also in Birmingham and are friends with the Hells Angels.

Only OC in New Orleans is the Mexicans moving dope through the port, which can be said of any coastal town in Louisiana.

Ohh and the occasional fairytale from a random poster every few months about the Nola LCN family thats still alive and all powerfull

I think this is spot on and I question if the term "Dixie Mafia" is even appropriate to describe it. If there was truly a "boss" (allegedly Kirksey Nix in that one case) who had crews operating in different southern cities that all paid tribute to him it would be one thing. I don't believe that has ever been the case. You had individual groups of criminals/bootleggers/thugs that ran the vice in different towns like Phenix City (AL), Biloxi (MS), McNairy County (TN), etc...I don't think those groups were ever together and answered to a central boss of the "Dixie Mafia". Just my opinion from what I've read.

there's HA down south. only in SC and NC though. when they first arrived in the 70s there was a huge war with the Outlaws, culminating in the HA's massacre of 5 Outlaws in their charlotte clubhouse.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19790705&id=alpQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2VgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6450,738858

but the south is definitely not HA friendly, for the most part. like the 3 HA's that tried to do some scouting in Florida, ended up shot execution style and dumped in a quarry, courtesy of the Outlaws.

If they tried to move in on Birmingham,they'll find themselves in heart of OMC territory,and only an hour and a half from Atlanta, another Outlaws stronghold for 40+ years.

Gold Coast in Ms:


In which we visit a Lost City long gone: a world where bootleggers were demigods, whiskey was good as gold, and the blues ruled supreme.

Let me tell you a story about a Lost City just a few minutes from where you’re sitting right now. A place where millions of dollars changed hands; where blood was spilled; where the legends of blues and r & b played.

To find it, head over to Hal & Mal’s, and maybe grab a glass of Southern Pecan. Then head south down Commerce, and hang a left on Old Brandon Road. You’ll cross the Pearl, low and brown and muddy in its summer doldrums, and then the impeccably pruned levee on your left. You’re in Rankin County now, but you can still catch a glimpse of downtown’s skyscrapers in your rearview mirror.

Go slow; there’s speed traps sometimes, although there’s little traffic. There’s some tumbledown shacks on your left, an old-timey gas station, and then you’re at Flowood Drive, not far from Trustmark Park and a M-Braves game. If you bear left a bit and snake down Fannin Road you’re still only five minutes from downtown.

What you didn’t see on that stretch was an invisible city called East Jackson, the Gold Coast of Mississippi. From the 1920s until the mid 1960s it was a haven for no-label Mason jar whisky, illegal blackjack, and the finest music in the country. For forty years it reigned supreme as a haven for wildness and lawlessness, a miniature burst of New Orleans, complete with its own river. East Jackson was so spectacular it earned its own theme song in 1928 by a local bluesman.

In 1919, the United States banned alcohol, and the nation was completely rid of intoxicating liquors. Rid of them in theory: in reality, bootlegging was such a huge business that entire economies sprung up around it. One of those was our lost city of East Jackson. Mississippi had gone dry in 1908 and stayed dry even after the federal ban on alcohol was lifted in ’33. We just had a little 10% tax on whisky sales, is all, even if selling whisky was technically illegal.

One thing you have to understand about Jackson is that the physical nature of the City hasn’t changed much in the years since old Louis LeFleur pitched camp on a bluff in 1821. The downtown has hewed to the same general roads since it was laid out. The main thing that’s changed is the Pearl River, and the role it plays in the City’s life. One of the main reasons the City even exists is because you could navigate the Pearl to get here. Cars have only been common for a few decades, and the highway system as we know it now is less than sixty years old. If you wanted to travel, or wanted to move goods, you used water.
And if you wanted to sell whisky, you did it on the Pearl. LeFleur’s Bluff was picked as the state’s new capital (over Natchez) in part because it was the most central part of the state that wasn’t a complete swamp. By the 1920’s, you could ride that Pearl Highway right up to East Jackson to an astounding collection of juke joints, dance halls, restaurants, and gambling outfits. There were dozens of businesses running in a completely parallel economy to the rest of Mississippi, to the rest of the United States.
The businesses ran on bootlegged hooch, tumbling dice, and blues. All that decline-of-empire finery was soaked in cash and spilled blood. East Jackson wasn’t wholly outside the law but it was close, and fights and even murder were constants in the calculus of the locale. East Jackson was considered not just bad but Wrong; a cradle of sin. There’s a 1939 Mississippi Supreme Court murder case that talks about how one tough (convicted of stabbing a fella to death after a bar fight) had first drove across the Pearl River over to the Gold Coast to pick up a half pint of liquor, after which they drove around Jackson drinking it. You can almost see the arched eyebrow of the justice writing the case.
In other words, it was probably the damned grandest place our grandparents and great-grandparents ever snuck off to. It was so stellar that when Bo Carter sang about it in 1928, he murmured that “some people say that East Jackson blues ain’t sad.”
Even the blues could be happy in East Jackson. But not for long.

Cartels Thrive In Surburb Atlanta:

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Oscar Reynoso owed his bosses $300,000, and he was running out of time.


One anti-drug operation in Atlanta netted $10.6 million, 108 kilos of cocaine, 17 pounds of meth and 32 weapons.

Gunmen snatched Reynoso and locked him in the basement of a home to try to settle the drug debt.

He was chained to a wall of the basement by his hands and ankles, gagged and beaten. His captors, members of a powerful Mexican drug cartel, held Reynoso for ransom, chained in the sweltering, dirty basement for six days without food.

Reynoso's ordeal could've been a scene from the drug war in Mexico. But it played out recently in suburban Atlanta, Georgia.

U.S. federal agents are fighting to keep that kind of violence from gripping Atlanta, as the city known for Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines has become a major distribution hub for Mexican drug cartels.

In fiscal year 2008, authorities confiscated about $70 million in drug-related cash in Atlanta, more than anywhere else in the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration says.

This fiscal year, Atlanta continues to outpace all other U.S. regions in such seizures, with $30 million confiscated so far. Next are Los Angeles, California, with about $19 million, and Chicago, Illinois, with $18 million.

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"There is definitely a center of this type of drug activity here, and we are working to make sure the violence does not spill out to the general public," Atlanta U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said.

Atlanta has become a stopping point for truckloads of Mexican cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine, agents say. The drugs are held in stash houses before being distributed up the East Coast.

"The money comes down here also to money managers in Atlanta, who get the books in order before it is sent out," said Rodney Benson, Atlanta's chief of the DEA.

Agents attribute the growth in drug trafficking to Atlanta's location, proximity to other major cities and access to major highways.

Authorities also point to the growth of the Hispanic population in Atlanta, which allows practitioners of the Mexican drug trade to blend in among hard-working, law-abiding Hispanics.

No place is that more evident than in Gwinnett County, a community about 20 miles north of Atlanta.

Gwinnett's Hispanic population rocketed from 8,470 in 1990 to 63,727 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census. By 2010, 20 percent of the county's projected population of 700,000 is expected to be Hispanic.

"In Gwinnett County, the drug dealers are able to hide in plain sight," county District Attorney Danny Porter said. "To combat this, we have to be much more coordinated between my office, the police department and the federal authorities. The presence of the organizations is a dilemma enough that we have to develop new tactics."

Federal agents say arrests and drug-related violence in Atlanta have been linked to the two most powerful Mexican organizations: the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels.

A battle over drug routes has been blamed for the recent surge in violence in Mexican border towns, bloodshed that has included hundreds of deaths.

The fear is that the battle will extend deeper into the United States, causing more to suffer a fate similar to Reynoso's ordeal in the Gwinnett County basement.

Lucky for Reynoso, federal agents had a wiretap on his captors' phones. Agents stormed the home just as it appeared that the debt would not be paid and Reynoso would be killed.

"There is no doubt in my mind that we saved his life that day," said the DEA's Benson.

One case resolved, as cartels thrive in Atlanta.

You ever heard of the Hankton Crime Family in New Orleans


NEW ORLEANS - A vast federal indictment involving murders, drugs, violence and conspiracy was unveiled Friday afternoon charging 13 members of an alleged Central City crime family with committing violent crimes in aid of racketeering and other serious crimes. Read the indictment

At the center of the investigation is notorious local killer Telly Hankton. He allegedly ran the operation, and relied on several associates and family members, including his 58-year-old mother.

Those charged include: Walter Porter, 37; Nakia Hankton, 34; Shirley Hankton, 58; Telly Hankton, 36; Thomas Hankton, 36; Troy Hankton, 28; George Jackson, 38; Derrick Smothers, 34; Andre Hankton, 35; Kevin Jackson, 39; Netthany Schexnayder, 33; Sana Johnson, 37; and Terrell Smothers, 36; all of New Orleans.

The feds linked members of the group to several shootings, as well as the murders of four men: Darnell Stewart, Jesse Reed, Hasan Williams and Curtis Matthews.

The indictment portrays a vast criminal network not seen in the city since the mid-1990s. And it was about that time, authorities say, that the Hankton operation got rolling.

Since then, they've allegedly moved hundreds of kilos of cocaine, some heroin, marijuana and more. And in order to run that drug business, authorities say, they shot, killed and intimidated people, including some of their own.

The indictment states they claimed Central City as their turf, with the borders of Jackson Avenue and St. Andrew Street, Simon Bolivar and Oretha Castle Haley.

Since at least 1996, the home base was a modest pink house in the 1900 block of Josephine Street.

Federal authorities swept the block early Friday morning before dawn, taking Shirley Hankton, the family matriarch, out in handcuffs. By mid-morning, the only sign of life there was an dog in the front yard.

Though she was the mom, her son Telly was the boss. Up until a murder conviction last year, he had a relatively clean criminal record.

But the indictment paints him as a veteran -- and sinister -- mastermind.

The feds say family, friends, even his mother, helped the gang prosper. And prosper they did, making countless millions, according to the indictment.

The indictment highlights a litany of alleged crimes. It also sheds new light on the high profile killing of Curtis Matthews, whose brother was a witness to an earlier Hankton killing.

Investigators allege that Telly Hankton's cousin, Thomas, paid the group's hitman $10,000 to murder John Matthews. Matthews had witnessed Telly murder a man in 2008.

The hitman, Walter Porter, allegedly tried, but never succeeded, and Matthews eventually testified against Telly Hankton.

And Porter allegedly went after Matthew's brother, who was found shot dead last October.

That killing provoked outrage in the community. Mayor Mitch Landrieu and others portrayed Telly Hankton as Public Enemy Number One, the most dangerous man in New Orleans.

Landrieu publicly stated he was “sending a message” to Hankton and his family and that law enforcement would be after them.

In November, a federal grand jury began hearing testimony on the case.

The indictment claims that Porter was the group's triggerman behind three separate murders. He has been in federal custody for months – held on separate gun and bank robbery charges.

Beyond violence, the feds say the group hatched a perjury scheme during Telly Hankton’s first murder trial, which ended in a hung jury in state court. The indictment

Federal investigators say the Hankton crime family ran the illegal drug trade in Central City for 17 years.

The 22-count, 42-page indictment states that between 1998 and 2003, Telly Hankton and his associates were buying and selling five to six kilos of cocaine every two weeks.

Five the 13 defendants named in the indictment – Telly, Thomas and Andre Hankton – along with Walter Porter and Kevin Jackson, face a possible death penalty.

“This RICO indictment deals with the most serious crimes that can be alleged, murder, murder of witnesses, murder of witnesses who were involved in criminal prosecutions,” said Eyewitness News legal analyst Chick Foret.

The RICO– Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization – Act is used by federal prosecutors to attack organized crime.

In the Hankton indictment, federal prosecutors claim the group concealed more than $43 million in ill-gotten gain.

Foret, a former federal prosecutor, said much of the information likely came from a source within the organization.

“It has been my experience that you do not get that much specificity to put into an indictment without several people cooperating and sitting down with the government,” he said.

Foret added that prosecuting this case in the federal system will likely mean hard time for many of the defendants.

“The difference between the case being in federal court and state court is the vast nature of resources,” Foret said.