Mafia Bosses
Semion Mogilevich
One of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives, Semion Mogilevich cuts a frightening figure. Called the "Brainy Don" (he has an economics degree), the Ukrainian-born mobster's gang has a multinational reach, with his hands allegedly in everything from a Pennsylvania-based company that defrauded investors of $150 million to the East European gas trade. His other reputed crimes include murders, arms dealing and drug trafficking. Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow in 2008 for tax evasion, but, brainy and crafty as he is, was released the following year.
Al Capone
You can't have a list of mobsters without mentioning the man who sticks in the minds of most people: Al Capone. It seemed for years as if law enforcement couldn't touch him. As head of the Chicago-based Italian-American empire known as the Outfit, Capone was guilty of any number of sins, from gambling and prostitution to bootlegging and narcotics trafficking to robbery, bribery and murder. Though his record is long, Capone gained the most notoriety for the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in which seven high-ranking members of a rival gang were shot dead. Though Capone himself had arranged to conveniently be vacationing at the time, there was little doubt the job didn't have the boss's approval. But what finally brought the mobster down was one of his most minor offenses: tax evasion. The lesser crime — and lighter sentence it carried — meant one of the most notorious crooks of all time served just seven years, six months and 15 days behind bars.
Charles 'Lucky' Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano organized organized crime. The New York City boss built the now legendary Mafia model, turning petty criminal activity into a smoothly operating enterprise that turned serious profits. Along with his associate Meyer Lansky, Luciano even instituted a board of directors. The Genovese family crime boss set up shop in the Lower East Side and palled around with the likes of Frank Sinatra until U.S. special prosecutor Thomas Dewey charged Luciano with 62 counts of compulsory prosecution. He was deported to Italy in 1946 and then appeared in Cuba a year later. But he never regained the status and cachet his former life of crime had afforded him and died in 1962.
Pablo Escobar
As a teenager, Pablo Escobar would steal tombstones and sell them to smugglers in Panama. From those devious roots, he entered the coca business in the 1970s, just as the U.S.'s obsession with the highly addictive drug began. Thanks to his ruthless ambition, Escobar built up Colombia's now infamous Medellin cartel into a powerful drug-trafficking enterprise that by the 1980s controlled more than 80% of cocaine shipped to the U.S., making him one of the 10 richest people in the world. After his death (he was gunned down at age 44 while on the run), books and movies shed light on just how lucrative his empire was. His son Juan Pablo Escobar (who changed his name to Sebastian Marroquin) said his father once burned some $2 million to keep himself and his daughter warm while they were on the lam. Another tale said Escobar once offered to pay off his country's $10 billion national debt. But his reign was not just lucrative: Escobar was also one of history's most violent criminals. The deaths of three Colombian presidential candidates, an attorney general, a Justice Minister, more than 200 judges, dozens of journalists, more than 1,000 police and countless ordinary citizens are all attributed to his rule.
John Gotti
He is widely considered the last of the Hollywood-style mobsters, a man who could waltz into court dressed to the nines and waltz back out, acquitted. "Dapper Don" was named boss of the Gambino crime family in the mid-1980s, and soon became known as "Teflon Don" for his ability to avoid prison. Charges, people said, just wouldn't stick. That was until the FBI embarked on a crusade to get John Gotti behind bars on numerous charges, including racketeering and murder. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison in 1992 and remained in jail until his death from cancer a decade later.
Hisayuki Machii
The Korean-born mobster got his start in the Japanese underworld after settling in Tokyo following World War II. Hisayuki Machii became a regular fixture in the black market and made his name in everything from tourism and prostitution to oil importing. He founded the Tosei-kai gang, which reached its height in the 1960s. The organization allowed Machii to become an essential fixer between Japan and South Korea. His exploits eventually made it possible for him to acquire a ferry service that connected Japan and South Korea along the shortest distance between the two countries. The gang was later disbanded, but Machii followed that up by forming two front organizations, Toa Yuai Jigyo Kumiai and Toa Sogo Kigyo. Machii retired in the 1980s, virtually unscathed by the law, and died in 2002.
Tony 'Big Tuna' Accardo
Tony "Big Tuna" Accardo died — remarkably, of natural causes — at age 86 in 1992. The "reputed" mob boss (he denied holding the position and eluded prosecutors) headed Chicago's Outfit after Al Capone, and upon Accardo's death the director of the Chicago Crime Commission said it was "the end of an era." Accardo may very well have been a gunman in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and he was on Chicago's public-enemy list in 1931. But that was just the beginning of a long, dark career. For decades, he controlled the Outfit, and despite numerous arrests for activities ranging from murder and kidnapping to extortion, union racketeering and gambling, he never served any jail time. A 1960 conviction on tax evasion was overturned on appeal: the Big Tuna (apparently, he once caught a tuna weighing 400 lb., or 180 kg) was slick. He was also aggressive: another of his nicknames, "Joe Batters," alluded to his handling of a baseball bat — and not for the game.
Salvatore Riina
"Gentleman, you are making a big mistake," is what Sicilian mobster Salvatore Riina told police when he was apprehended in January 1993 for his dark deeds over more than 20 years as a fugitive and operative in the Sicilian Mafia. He was wanted for his connection to more than 100 killings perpetrated during his climb to the top of the organized-crime gang. Riina, also known as "Toto," was said to have started his career as a hit man. He went into hiding in 1969 after being acquitted of triple homicide. But that didn't stop him from allegedly orchestrating the bloody Mafia wars in 1980s Sicily, which claimed dozens of lives and sealed his post at the top of the organization. In October 1993, despite his attempt to claim a case of mistaken identity, Riina was sentenced to life in prison, the harshest punishment allowed in Italy.
Dawood Ibrahim
Mustachioed and portly, it's hard to imagine that Dawood Ibrahim is one of the most dangerous people in the world. Long heralded as the don of the Mumbai underworld, the shadowy Ibrahim went from being a classic extortionist huckster and gold smuggler in the Indian seaside metropolis to a man now implicated in a ring of global terrorist networks that include ties to al-Qaeda. Ibrahim is suspected as a potential suspect in masterminding a 1993 terror attack in Mumbai, which killed hundreds, and may have had a hand in the 2008 attacks on a number of prominent, ritzy Mumbai hotels. What adds to his mystique is that his whereabouts remain unknown — Indian intelligence officials suspect he is in Pakistan, possibly in the port city of Karachi, but the Pakistanis reject those claims. Some estimates of his wealth number into billions of dollars, tracing him to assets and properties from Malaysia to East Africa. In 2008, Forbes ranked him among the top 10 most wanted fugitives; the following year, Ibrahim made the magazine's list of the world's most powerful people.
Xie Caiping
You've heard of the Godfathers — meet the Godmother. In Chongqing, a Chinese megacity with a population near 30 million, Xie Caiping held sway as a local kingpin (or queenpin) for a number of years. A Beijing crackdown on Chongqing's entrenched mafia in 2009 revealed how Xie, for years, ran illegal gambling deals while keeping a string of local police and government officials in her pocket. She owned numerous luxury cars and villas and boasted a harem of some 16 young male paramours. Xie, 46, who looks more the part of middle-aged matron than criminal femme fatale, was eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison, but not before tales of her power and excesses titillated the regional media.