Cartels have held a monopoly on the drug trade for decades, but there’s a new supplier in town. Medical professionals with a prescription pad are increasingly the suppliers of widely abused pills to drug dealers catering to the rich and famous. The recent conviction of “Ketamine Queen” Jasveen Sangha uncovered a small part of an emerging trend in drug trafficking.

Earlier this month, a federal court sentenced Sangha, 41, to 15 years in prison for selling ketamine to several individuals who subsequently died by overdose, including well-known actor Matthew Perry, best known for his role as the wise-cracking Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom Friends.

According to his obituary in The New York Times, Perry was “found unresponsive in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles” on October 28, 2023. The Los Angeles County medical examiner reported that Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine” with “drowning,” “coronary artery disease,” and effects from opioids contributing to his death. He was 54.

Perry’s live-in personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, listed as a “co-conspirator” in the Sangha indictment, acquired and administered the ketamine to Perry. According to court records, Iwamasa injected the actor with at least 27 shots of ketamine in the five days leading up to his death. Film and television director/producer Erik Fleming, also named as a co-conspirator, acted as an intermediary for Sangha and Iwamasa.

Sangha sourced the drugs from two California-licensed medical doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, who were listed in the indictment as co-defendant and co-conspirator, respectively. Plasencia taught Iwamasa how to administer the drugs to Perry.

The apparent exclusion of the cartels from Sangha’s supply chain indicates an evolution of the drug trade. While cartels have gradually found ways to incorporate ketamine into their operations, Sangha’s short-lived success demonstrates an emerging niche for dealers with wealthy clientele.

Rise of the ‘Ketamine Queen’

Born to a wealthy family, Sangha was positioned for a life of comfort. A dual British American citizen, she grew up in Calabasas, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. After graduating high school, she attended the University of California, Irvine, followed by a sojourn in London to earn an MBA. It appeared to be the start of a promising career.

However, some of her friends told the New York Post that Sangha returned to Los Angeles in 2010 a changed woman. Although she apparently “got a nose job and maybe other things done to her face,” the shift was more than physical. Following a failed nail salon venture, she fell into the partying scene and became a promoter. In this role, Sangha had access to party drugs and began dealing them as a side gig, which would evolve into a new illicit career path.

Foreshadowing this new life, Sangha once created a website about the Mafia on Tripod, a now-defunct web-hosting site, while at UC Irvine. The pages on the site included “Mafia Mug Shots,” “Famous Mafia Faces” and “Favorite Mafia Movies.” The latter mentions her love of the 1983 film Scarface, which featured Al Pacino as Cuban drug trafficker Tony Montana in Miami. Like Montana at the beginning of the film, Sangha had just arrived on the shore of her own Miami.

Around the same time, her family’s wealth began to falter. According to a BBC report, her mother and stepfather ran several Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Sangha worked as an area manager for multiple KFC locations during her time at UC Irvine, indicated by her LinkedIn profile. But in 2013, the company sued her parents for “failing to pay royalties to the company for the use of its branding,” leading to her stepfather declaring bankruptcy. With her fallback apparently eliminated, Sangha was even more pressed to find new sources of income.

With a group of women known as the “Kitties,” Sangha frequented nightclubs and hosted lavish, themed parties across California, including “white” parties, “glitter” parties and “shroom-shroom” parties, a friend of Sangha’s, Tony Marquez, told the BBC. The latter hints at a key feature of these extravagant gatherings: drugs. The parties became known for their supply of legitimate ketamine.

Wary of street dealers who tried to pass off fentanyl for party drugs, Sangha first sourced her ketamine from legal pharmacies and veterinarians in Mexico. Around 2019, her supply became large enough that she rented a home in North Hollywood to serve as a “stash house.”

Later that year, the Ketamine Queen claimed her first victim. On August 26, 2019, Sangha sold ketamine to Cody McLaury. Within 24 hours, he was dead. “The ketamine you sold my brother killed him,” Kimberly McLaury, the victim’s sister, wrote in a text message to Sangha. “It’s listed as the cause of death.”

Court records show that within a few days of the message, Sangha did a Google search: “can ketamine be listed as a cause of death.”

Sometime in the early 2020s, Sangha checked into a rehab clinic, where she was reported to have met Perry. By this time, Sangha had been conspiring with the doctors, Plasencia and Chavez, as her suppliers. In text messages, she referred to her source as “master chef” and “scientist” and called ketamine bottles “cans of Dr. Pepper.” In a message to Chavez, who ran a ketamine clinic, Plasencia wondered “how much this moron will pay” for the drug, referring to Perry.

Nearly a year after Perry’s death, Sangha and her co-conspirators were arrested and charged on counts related to the distribution of ketamine. Sangha had tried to delete the digital evidence of their crimes, but many of the messages were still revealed in the indictment. With such damning evidence, Sangha, facing up to 65 years in prison, entered a guilty plea in September 2025.

Remarkably, Sangha had figured out a way to circumvent the Latin American drug cartels. The key to her success lay in her drug of choice.

An ‘impractical’ drug for cartels

Ketamine is a powerful anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects, sometimes referred to as a “horse tranquilizer.” A DEA fact sheet notes that users of the drug “feel detached from their pain and environment.” Ketamine was developed in the 1960s and, following its FDA approval in 1970, was administered to soldiers for emergency surgery during the Vietnam War.

Alongside MDMA, it’s a common substance found at nightclubs, festivals and raves. It can be injected, inhaled via nasal spray or taken via pills or dissolvable lozenges. Although overdoses by ketamine use alone are rare, recreational use of the drug is seldom done in isolation.

Legitimate use of ketamine on patients is administered only under close supervision by a medical professional. It is often used today in hospital emergency departments, which have immediate access to life-saving equipment such as automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and supplemental oxygen. In recent years, however, ketamine clinics have appeared wherein low doses are used to treat depression and chronic pain.

Reality television and high-profile celebrities have popularized the use of ketamine as an alternative treatment for depression. On an episode of the Hulu reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a couple is shown going to a Utah ketamine therapy clinic to supplement marriage counseling. American model Chrissy Teigen and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have both touted their use of ketamine.

“Ketamine is helpful for getting out of the negative frame of mind,” Musk told former CNN reporter Don Lemon in a 2024 interview.

Because of its medical applications, illicit ketamine is almost entirely sourced from pharmacies, hospitals and clinics. It’s also a common drug for sedating pets, making veterinary clinics a popular source for ketamine dealers. But unlike fentanyl, you won’t typically find Latin American cartels making their own ketamine.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, producing ketamine is a “complex and time-consuming process, making clandestine production impractical.” Making ketamine requires specialized equipment, precise environmental conditions and technical expertise. Still, some Latin American cartels have gradually found ways to introduce ketamine to their supply.

Tusi, the ‘pink cocaine’

In 2019, a pink concoction was first reported in American nightclubs and rave parties. Dyed with pink food coloring, “pink cocaine” is a synthetic drug cocktail containing a mix of various illicit substances. Combinations in the mixture may include cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine, MDMA and ketamine.

In The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, New York University professor Joseph Palamar wrote that the original variety of the drug, called 2C or 2C-B, emerged in the rave scene in the 1990s. This version contained phenethylamine, a drug derived from amphetamine with stimulant and psychedelic properties. In the 2000s, the drug found its way to Medellín, Colombia, where Pablo Escobar once ruled the world of cocaine trafficking. However, in the late 2010s, illicit drug manufacturers in Colombia sought a “cheaper copycat version” of 2C. Mimicking the effects of 2C, this new drug cocktail became known as “tusi,” “tucibi” (the phonetic spellings of 2C and 2C-B in Spanish) or “pink cocaine.” Today, tusi rarely contains 2C.

Celebrities have elevated the profile of pink cocaine. Vanity Fair reporter Kase Wickman wrote that among the famous people using tusi were New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs and rappers Cardi B and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Combs, who is currently serving a 50-month sentence for a prostitution-related conviction, allegedly required his employees to always carry the drug, according to a lawsuit. Tragically, a toxicology report also found the drug in British singer Liam Payne’s blood, which contributed to his fatal fall from a hotel balcony in 2024.

Tusi is how cartel drug manufacturers have entered the illegal ketamine trade. The lower cost of the pink drug makes it easier to manufacture and cheaper to buy. According to a report by InSight Crime, Chile has one of the largest synthetic drug markets in Latin America, with ketamine leading in volume. Nearly all tusi produced in Chile contains ketamine as the base.

Cartel activity in Chile has been increasing over the past few years. Part of the surge is because of organized crime groups from other countries setting up shop in the country, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel of Mexico and Tren de Aragua of Venezuela. However, Chile has its own powerful drug trafficking gangs, such as Los Marchant.

Los Marchant is run by members of the Marchant family, including Francisco Marchant and his daughter, Antonella Marchant. Although both are currently in prison, Antonella is believed to be the gang’s de facto leader. According to Chilean court documents, Francisco worked with the suppliers while Antonella led the distribution of drugs, including marijuana and tusi.

While in prison, Antonella developed a romantic relationship with another tusi trafficker, Sabrina Durán Montero, who was murdered by rivals following her May 2023 release. Durán Montero, also known as “La Ina,” was best known for becoming a TikTok influencer while behind bars. Under the name “Joakina Gusman,” a nod to Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Durán Montero had more than 600,000 followers. Her social media success fit her position as a trafficker of what Palamar calls an “Instagrammable” drug.

Tusi continues to be a popular drug—Coachella attendees this week are certain to encounter the pink powder. But there remains a market for pure, unadulterated ketamine, particularly among the wealthy. The Ketamine Queen is behind bars, but the niche remains open for a new trafficker to take the crown.

In March 2005, two retired New York City detectives were arrested without much fanfare outside of Piero’s, a restaurant near the Las Vegas Strip. There was no shootout or dramatic chase, just federal agents closing in on a story that had circulated in law enforcement circles for years.

The men in custody were Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. Once-decorated members of the NYPD, they were charged with acting as paid killers for the Mafia.

A federal jury convicted them 20 years ago this month. By the spring of 2006, as they stood in a New York courtroom awaiting sentencing, the rumor that two NYPD detectives had secretly worked for the Mafia was no longer speculation. Federal prosecutor Daniel Wenner described it as “the bloodiest, most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen.”

For Eppolito, the story began before joining the NYPD. Raised among relatives tied to organized crime, he entered law enforcement carrying a background that blurred the lines from the beginning. By the early 1990s, he had leaned into that identity publicly, framing his life as a dual narrative of Mob proximity and police work. He even authored a book titled Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob.  

Caracappa, his partner, was far less visible. Where Eppolito cultivated a persona, Caracappa remained largely in the background, a quieter figure whose name carried little public recognition until the case surfaced.

The pair of detectives had access to sensitive police intelligence and the ability to move within investigations without attracting suspicion. Together, prosecutors argued, they were far more dangerous than either appeared individually.

The man in the middle

The corrupt cop duo did not interact directly with mobsters. Instead, they used a go-between. That individual was Burton Kaplan, a longtime associate who acted as a bridge between the Lucchese crime family and the outside world. According to testimony, Kaplan connected the detectives to underboss Anthony Casso in the early to mid-1980s, facilitating a relationship that allowed information to flow in both directions.

On the stand in 2006, Kaplan recalled moving out to Las Vegas in 1994—an attempt to evade the law—and meeting up with Eppolito. He described a mundane meeting place: “We started walking in the fruit department while I wheeled the cart. I asked him if he was feeling any heat.”

“Casso purchased a copy of Louie’s book, which is the source of all our problems,” Kaplan noted, a reminder that the line between public image and private reality had begun to collapse.

The story was not entirely hidden. Suspicions around dirty cops aired early in the 1990s. Reporting surrounding Kaplan’s own legal troubles made it clear that investigators were already exploring whether two New York detectives were tied to the same network.

Betraying the badge

Between 1986 and 1992, Caracappa and Eppolito acted as covert assets for the Lucchese crime family, assisting with multiple homicides. The pair used their positions within the police to aid in carrying out hits.

One of their more direct methods involved fake traffic stops. They used this trick in February 1986 to kill Israel Greenwald amid fears he would expose illicit operations. After claiming he was a suspect in a hit-and-run, they took him to a Brooklyn auto garage where they killed him and concealed his body beneath the concrete floor.

They also passed along confidential information from police databases to Casso’s hitmen, helping them to locate their targets. However, the intelligence was faulty in at least one case. In December 1986, Nicholas Guido was killed in a case of mistaken identity—he just happened to have the same name as the real target, a Gambino crime family associate.

Casso used this information to track down people he believed were police informants, including Pasquale Varriale, John “Otto” Heidel, Bruno Facciola and Anthony DiLapi. The latter believed he was safe from the Mob while hiding out in Los Angeles, but he could not escape law enforcement’s intelligence network.

Some of their boldest moves also contributed to their demise. In the case of Gambino associate James Hydell, who went missing in October 1986, the pair “arrested” him at his mother’s home and delivered their captive to Casso. Hydell’s mother later recognized Eppolito on television while he was promoting his book on a daytime talk show. In 2003, she finally told investigators that the detectives had visited her home before her son went missing.

The boss who built—and complicated—the case

Kaplan made the connection possible, but Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso made the case. A central figure in the Lucchese organization during one of its most violent periods, Casso became a cooperating witness in 1994 to avoid the death penalty. It was his account that first placed Eppolito and Caracappa as active participants in organized crime.

At the same time, he was far from a clean witness. Casso lied repeatedly, contradicted himself, and was deemed unreliable in certain contexts. But additional evidence, including timelines, records and other testimony, corroborated enough of what he said that investigators were able to build a case beyond his word alone.

Even then, Casso’s own accounts shifted over time. At times he suggested that the detectives were deeply involved in multiple hits, and at others he downplayed how directly they worked with him. In a recorded call from prison after the convictions, he pushed back on at least one allegation, insisting, “They had nothing to do with the killing of Eddie Lino. … I told them they are being falsely accused of that crime.”

Eppolito and Caracappa allegedly shot and killed Lino while he was stopped at a traffic light in 1992.

The case had endured significant setbacks by the time it reached a jury. Earlier attempts to bring charges ran into legal challenges, including how far back prosecutors could pursue the crimes, which dated to the 1980s. Their participation became clear in court, but the depth of their involvement was never fully settled.

At one point, the dismissal of key elements forced investigators to regroup and rebuild the case under a broader racketeering framework. The case that went to trial was the result of years of reworking a story that had long defied evidence.

Conviction and collapse

In 2006, the verdict confirmed what had once sounded improbable even within law enforcement circles. Two former NYPD detectives had used their positions not just to leak information, but to assist a criminal organization in tracking, abducting and killing its enemies.

By the time sentencing occurred in 2006, the weight of that reality was clear. Calling it “probably the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse,” Judge Jack Weinstein framed the case as a fundamental betrayal of public trust.

In the years following their conviction, both Eppolito and Caracappa challenged the verdict through a series of appeals, all of which ultimately failed. Civil actions followed as well, including a lawsuit brought by the family of one of the victims.

Caracappa died in federal custody in 2017, while Eppolito died two years later in prison.

Anthony Casso, whose testimony helped bring the case to light, remained incarcerated for the rest of his life and died in 2020. He was 78.

Christian Cipollini is an organized crime historian and the award-winning author and creator of the comic book series LUCKY, based on the true story of Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

On March 24, 1966, Virginia Hill died far from the life that made her famous. Sixty years later, she has become a legend in organized crime lore. But the distance between that legend and the historical record demands a reconsideration of the stories built around her.

Hill has long existed more as a symbol than as a person. In midcentury newspapers, she was alternately portrayed as a glamorous accomplice, a Mob insider or a dangerous beauty orbiting powerful men. The reality appears narrower and more human. Her influence came largely from her proximity to mobsters rather than any kind of authority—a distinction that faded as her notoriety grew.

Accounts of the Alabama native’s early life consistently point to hardship. Poverty, instability and survival shaped her upbringing long before she became involved with organized crime or Hollywood. Married at 15 and divorced three years later, Hill was navigating independence at an age when few women were expected to do so alone.

When she reached Illinois in 1933, she encountered men connected to the Chicago Outfit. These relationships, particularly with bookmaker Joseph Epstein, introduced her to a world in which association could open doors as easily as it created risk. Her later romantic connection to Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was not the start of her story, but it did make it far more visible.

Hill was already a known figure within law enforcement circles by the mid-1940s, but she became a national figure only after June 20, 1947, when Siegel was shot and killed through the window of her Beverly Hills home. While she was overseas at the time, her absence did little to quiet speculation. Instead, it placed her at the center of a story she had not witnessed, transforming her almost overnight from a peripheral figure into a subject of public fascination.

The making of a reputation

That fascination hardened during the 1950-1951 U.S. Senate investigation into organized crime led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. Called to testify, Hill arrived already framed by headlines as both an insider and a spectacle. Coverage focused as much on her appearance and demeanor as on her testimony, describing her as defiant or glamorous depending on editorial mood.

The hearing transcripts reveal Hill as a more restrained witness. She answered cautiously, frequently claimed limited knowledge and avoided dramatic confrontation. Even at the time, some observers recognized the gap between image and reality.

Columnist Drew Pearson wrote in 1951 that while television audiences imagined Hill’s life as glamorous, “the underworld … knew every time Virginia had a large chunk of cash,” describing repeated assaults and robberies that exposed a harsher existence. As Pearson concluded after her testimony: “Some television viewers thought Virginia Hill’s life was a bed of roses. But it wasn’t.”

Many of the sharp remarks later attributed to Hill appear to be inventions. One infamous vulgar quote widely linked to her Senate appearance cannot be found in official transcripts or reliable contemporary reporting—an example of how repetition gradually cements speculation into accepted fact.

Even familiar stories surrounding Hill remain uncertain. One persistent tale claims that Siegel named the Flamingo Hotel after her nickname, “Flamingo.” But in fact, the casino was named by its first developer, Billy Wilkerson, not Siegel.

As Marc Romano, a Paris-based researcher and biographer currently completing a forthcoming biography of Hill, notes, Hill was never known by the nickname “Flamingo” among friends or family—another instance in which legend expanded beyond documentation.

A similar pattern appeared in discussions of narcotics trafficking. Federal Bureau of Narcotics files from the late 1930s into the early 1940s describe the emergence of a Mexico–U.S. heroin pipeline and repeatedly reference Siegel, Meyer Lansky and California associates connected to Anthony “Black Tony” Parmegini.

Hill never appeared as an operational participant in FBN documents, but Romano says that FBI reporting noted she was “in constant contact with dope peddlers in the Los Angeles area,” suspicion rooted largely in association. Romano’s research reflects that distinction clearly. While no evidence places Hill in trafficking itself, her proximity to figures long suspected by federal narcotics officials ensured she appeared repeatedly in investigative reporting, in which association often became implication.

Context matters. Federal narcotics officials were already publicly linking exiled Mob boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano to West Coast drug trafficking, and newspapers amplified the claim. Several suspected figures were killed in the months before Siegel’s death, encouraging theories of a broader syndicate.

By the time Siegel was murdered—and Hill’s rented home became central to the story—organized crime, narcotics and internal violence had fused in the public imagination, making her almost inevitably part of a narrative still searching for shape. She likely knew more than history can prove, but even aggressive investigations stopped short of implicating her directly.

Reinvention abroad

The years following Siegel’s death were marked by instability. Hill struggled emotionally and financially, surviving multiple overdose attempts. The mythology often freezes at the height of her notoriety, but the record shows a woman increasingly trying—and failing—to outrun her reputation.

In 1950, while visiting Sun Valley, Idaho, she met Austrian ski instructor Hans Hauser. Their swift marriage suggested an attempt at reinvention and distance from American scandal. Europe offered anonymity and, briefly, the possibility of an ordinary life.

That distance proved incomplete. Throughout the 1950s, the Internal Revenue Service pursued Hill aggressively, challenging the income behind her former lifestyle. Asset seizures and prolonged scrutiny limited her ability to return comfortably to the United States. Family difficulties, including legal trouble involving her brother around 1960, further narrowed an already shrinking circle of stability.

An inescapable past

In March 1966, Hill died in Austria from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. She was 49. Her body was discovered outdoors near a small brook outside Salzburg, a detail that immediately fueled speculation of foul play despite authorities ruling the death a suicide.

Romano’s research emphasizes how long the decline had been underway. “Having already made seven or eight suicide attempts since the age of 30 (attempts for which accounts exist, because there may have been others, including earlier in her life, that are unknown), there is absolutely no doubt that she took her own life,” Romano said. “Anything else recounted is pure invention worthy of a Hollywood gangster film or a roman noir.”

Conspiracy theories nevertheless followed almost immediately. Her son Peter, then 15, didn’t believe her death was a suicide, according to what he told the press publicly at the time.

Another theory speculated that exiled Mob figure Joe Adonis arranged her death, a claim rooted more in shared history than documentation. By 1966, many figures once connected to Hill were dead, imprisoned or publicly exposed. Whatever secrets she possessed had long since lost urgency.

Nearly six decades later, Hill remains suspended between myth and reality. She likely knew far more than history can prove and perhaps participated in ways that left no trace. Strip away the mythology and her story reflects a slow, fading life shaped by proximity to power—and an ending that was, ultimately, human.

Christian Cipollini is an organized crime historian and the award-winning author and creator of the comic book series LUCKY, based on the true story of Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

One by one, Mexico’s most notorious drug lords are being brought to justice.

• In 2016, Mexican authorities captured Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, former leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Today, he is serving a life sentence in a high-security prison in Colorado.

• In 2022, Mexican authorities captured Rafael “Rafa” Caro Quintero, co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel. He was extradited to the United States in 2025 and faces an array of murder and drug charges.

• In 2024, U.S. authorities arrested Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, another top Sinaloa Cartel leader. He faces sentencing after pleading guilty to numerous drug-trafficking charges.

• On Sunday, Mexican security forces killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

In each case, Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies shared information and collaborated to take down the cartel bosses. But the operation against El Mencho resulted in by far the most violence.

El Mencho, 59, was captured in Tapalpa, the cartel’s home base in Jalisco, after a shootout. The cartel boss was wounded in the melee and died in an airplane headed to Guadalajara. Nine other cartel members were killed in the firefight. Mexican military officials said they recovered rocket launchers from the cabin where El Mencho was holed up.

But that was just the beginning. Reacting to the capture of El Mencho, cartel operatives set off a wave of violence across 20 Mexican states. They put up armed roadblocks on highways—commonly known as “narco blockades”—and set fire to dozens of buildings and vehicles.

Tourists in Puerto Vallarta were instructed to stay in their rooms, and passengers were stranded at Guadalajara International Airport. Many businesses closed. At least 62 people died, including 34 suspected cartel members, before the backlash subsided and authorities restored order.

Mexican authorities said they found the location of the elusive drug lord through information obtained from a man close to one of El Mencho’s “romantic partners.” According to the New York Times, the CIA played a role in locating El Mencho.

The takedown of El Mencho is widely seen as a victory for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who was facing pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to be more aggressive in going after the cartels. But at the same time, El Mencho’s demise has the potential to unleash a new round of violence over who will succeed him at the helm of the Jalisco Cartel, which is known for extreme violence.

El Mencho’s criminal history started in the United States in the 1980s. As a young man, he migrated north and sold drugs in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was convicted on heroin trafficking charges in 1994 and served three years in prison.

He was deported back to Mexico in 1997. After briefly working as a police officer, he hooked up with Sinaloa Cartel trafficker Ignacio Coronel Villareal, known as “Nacho Coronel.” After Villareal was killed in 2010, El Mencho created the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

El Mencho—the nickname is a common derivative of his first name, Nemesio—grew his fledgling cartel by flooding the United States first with crystal meth, then with fentanyl. His organization also benefited from the collapse of the competing Sinaloa Cartel after El Chapo was captured and extradited to the United States.

The CJNG was known for extreme acts of violence, both against rival cartels and against police and military forces. El Mencho’s paramilitary forces took on the equally violent Zetas, carrying out massacres. In 2015, after a previous attempt to capture El Mencho, his group deployed a rocket launcher to take down a military helicopter, set up 39 narco blockades and hijacked vehicles.

CJNG is also linked to mass graves discovered in Jalisco state. Dozens of bodies were unearthed at two locations there in 2025.

The story of El Mencho has been a popular subject of narcocorridos, or drug ballads, for years. But Ioan Grillo, a Mexico City-based journalist and member of The Mob Museum’s Advisory Council, reports that in some cases El Mencho paid musicians to write and perform the songs.

“I interviewed a Sinaloan singer based in Los Angeles who described how Mencho paid him $80,000 for two drug ballads,” Grillo writes on his CrashOut Substack blog. “The singer told me how Mencho sent him the lyrics he wanted, and the singer made them more rhythmic and poetic.”

When Antonio Blakeney ventured into international basketball, he became a star. He had been Louisiana State University’s top scorer in the 2016-17 season, followed by a short stint with the Chicago Bulls and its development league team. In 2019, Blakeney joined the Jiangsu Dragons of the Chinese Basketball Association. It’s not uncommon for players to explore lucrative deals in international leagues when they don’t break out in the NBA. Over the next few years, Blakeney floated between international leagues but once again found himself playing for Jiangsu in the 2022-23 season, averaging more than 32 points per game.

In March 2023, Blakeney’s team faced a challenging foe in the Guangdong Southern Tigers. Guangdong was favored to win by 12 points, but it wasn’t even that close. The Tigers crushed the Dragons 127-96. This was thanks in part to Blakeney’s underwhelming performance, scoring only 11 points. Fans may have thought he was just having a bad night, but the game allegedly went just as Blakeney had planned.

On January 22, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf announced that the federal government was charging 26 individuals in connection with a point-shaving scheme involving NCAA college basketball and the Chinese professional league. One indictment was dedicated to Blakeney, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which includes schemes to defraud casinos and sports betting companies. The indictment accuses Blakeney of “intentionally poor performances, sitting out of games and/or removing himself from games.”

According to the indictment, Blakeney conspired with fixers while playing in the Chinese league before recruiting college players to do the same in the NCAA. They targeted players “for whom the bribe payments would meaningfully supplement or exceed legitimate NIL opportunities.” NIL—acronym for Name, Image and Likeness—refers to the 2021 NCAA rule change that allows student-athletes to profit from how their personal brands are used commercially, including endorsements from companies.

Over the past few months, betting scandals have rocked professional and college sports. But these incidents are part of a larger pattern of organized crime interference in professional sports that has been going on for more than a century. The people and crime groups involved change over time, but the playbook remains the same.

Early in the 20^th century, shady bookmakers had a simple approach to fixing matches. All they had to do was convince players or competitors to lose intentionally. Boxing was a common sport for this, as fixers bribed or threatened one participant to “take a dive.”

Fixing also made its way to team sports. In 1919, a group of gamblers that may have included underworld power broker Arnold Rothstein orchestrated a plan to bribe eight Chicago White Sox players, including star slugger “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

In the 1940s, a Chicago bookmaker gave the gambling world a new way to make wagers on sporting events. Charles McNeil worked as a math teacher and a bank analyst before realizing that his hobby—sports betting—made him more money than his day jobs. But he was so good at it that bookies started to cut him off. Instead, McNeil became a bookmaker himself and made popular a new form of betting.

McNeil had a system of predicting how many points a team would score in any given match, which he adapted into a more balanced system of betting. In McNeil’s “point-spread” system, a team winning does not guarantee a payout. Instead, the team must win by a predetermined number of points. The result is closer odds on either side of the bet. The bettor has better odds of winning money, and the bookmaker has a better chance of making a profit. The spread has often been called the “great equalizer,” as it allows bookmakers to balance wagers and reduce risk regardless of the winner.

McNeil’s system was so popular that it attracted the attention of mobsters. Wisely, he decided to cash out rather than partner with criminals. But the Mob didn’t need McNeil to capitalize on his contributions to sports betting.

“Point shaving” is a more subtle form of fixing that takes advantage of point-spread bets. Rather than manipulating whether their team wins or loses, players in a point-shaving scheme conspire with fixers to influence the margin of victory or loss.

For instance, on January 15, the Boston Celtics played the Miami Heat. With the Celtics favored to win, BetMGM Sportsbook placed the spread at Celtics -1.5 (-125) and Heat +1.5 (-105). This means that to win $100 with a $125 bet on the Celtics, Boston would have to win the game by two or more points. Likewise, to win $100 with a $105 bet on the Heat, Miami would have to win outright or lose by one point. The half-point prevents a tie.

The Celtics prevailed over the Heat 119-114, beating the spread. Those who wagered on the Celtics went home a little richer.

But if the game were just four points closer, the Boston bettors would have been out of luck. If a fixer could bribe a player to miss a free throw, pass up on a three-pointer or intentionally foul, they just might be able to manipulate the outcome.

Soon after the point spread, also called the handicap, became popular, the Mob was ready to game the system. In 1951, one of the first major point-shaving scandals exposed how widely the issue had spread. While national attention focused on the City College of New York, which had won the 1950 NCAA championship, six other schools, 32 players and a referee were enveloped in the scandal. Mob-associated bookmaker Salvatore Sollazzo ultimately spent 12 years in prison for his role as one of the scheme’s masterminds.

While this was happening, the U.S. Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, had been holding hearings across the country. When the Kefauver Committee convened in Washington, D.C., the committee heard testimony from Sidney Brodson, a professional gambler from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who commented on point shaving.

“First of all, you did not have the five members [of the team]. Secondly, you could not control what the other team was going to do,” Brodson explained. He said that, to ensure odds of success, fixers would find a big enough spread with room for error. Point shaving, he said, was easier to sell to players than outright throwing the game.

“Now, technically, I suppose a young boy was able to assuage his conscience with the thought that he was not throwing his dear old Alma Mammy to the winds, that he was going to win the game, so what difference did it make whether his team won by 5 or by 14,” Brodson told the committee.

For decades to come, the Mob took this supposed moral loophole into locker rooms with a proposition: We’ll pay you to win the game, just not by too much. And if you’re already going to lose, just take it easy during the game and profit.

Before Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal entered the world of Las Vegas casinos, he played a role in sports-betting scandals in college basketball and football.

On September 23, 1960, Rosenthal met with University of Oregon football player Mickey Bruce and offered the defensive halfback $5,000 if he could ensure his team lost by at least eight points. Michigan was already favored to win, and, according to Bruce, Rosenthal and his co-conspirator, David Budin, offered the college student “a number of ways … to lose a ball game for a team.”

“At that point I wasn’t sure whether I should get out of the room right away or go along with the story,” Bruce told a Senate subcommittee about the incident. “I decided it would be best if I went along and agreed and reported it as soon as I could.”

In 1962, Rosenthal and Budin were indicted in North Carolina for another point-shaving scheme, this time for bribing a New York University basketball player, Ray Paprocky. Rosenthal pleaded no contest and had to pay a $6,000 fine. The indictment did little to curb point-shaving schemes. Rosenthal moved to Las Vegas at the end of the decade and let the next generation take over.

In 1980, Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill was arrested for trafficking narcotics, as depicted in the 1990 film Goodfellas starring Ray Liotta as Hill. Hill flipped and became a government witness after receiving word that he was on the Mob’s hit list. One of his many revelations to the feds included details about a point-shaving scandal involving his associate Jimmy Burke (played by Robert De Niro in Goodfellas) and members of the Boston College basketball team.

Hill explained to screenwriter and author Nick Pileggi the details of the scheme for his 1985 book, Wiseguy, which served as the basis for Goodfellas.

One of Hill’s narcotics-trafficking associates, Paul Mazzei, brought Hill into a scheme involving bookmaker Tony Perla and Boston College basketball player Rick Kuhn. The 6-foot-5 Kuhn, who grew up with Perla, agreed to bring in his friend and team captain, Jim Sweeney, and star player Ernie Cobb. Hill brought the fix to Burke and Lucchese crime family capo Paul Vario, both of whom enthusiastically signed on.

“The players loved it, because they were not dumping games,” Hill told Pileggi. “They could keep their honor. All they had to do was make sure that they didn’t win by more than the point spread. For instance, if the bookies or the Vegas odds-makers said the line was Boston by 10, our players had to muff enough shots to make sure that they won by less than the bookies’ 10 points.”

The scheme ended prematurely when pride prevailed over greed. During a game against the favored College of the Holy Cross, Kuhn was supposed to ensure the opposing team won by more than seven points. For most of the game, it seemed that the fix was in, but toward the end Holy Cross lost steam, firing up the Boston players. They still lost, but by only three points.

“Jimmy went nuts. He was furious. He put his foot through his own television set. I know he lost about $50,000 all by himself,” Hill told Pileggi. “I finally got Perla on the phone, and he said that he had talked to Kuhn right after the game and that Kuhn had said they just couldn’t bring themselves to lose by too much against Holy Cross.”

The scheme came with stiff consequences. Kuhn, Perla and Mazzei were convicted and received 10-year sentences. Burke received 12.

Cobb was acquitted during his trial, and Sweeney dodged an indictment altogether. As reported by the New York Times, Sweeney “felt tricked” by his teammate and was “too frightened” of Hill to back out.

Although infamous Mob fixers such as Rosenthal, Burke and Hill are long gone, others have risen to take their place.

Many of the recent indictments have one name in common: Shane “Sugar” Hennen. Hennen is a professional gambler and social media influencer—in his words, a “betfluencer”—involved in several cases of alleged point shaving and rigged proposition bets in the NBA, NCAA and CBA (A “prop” bet is a wager on a specific event in a game, such as player’s individual performance.)

Hennen was also named as a co-defendant last October in the rigged poker game indictments alongside former Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and a dozen known members or associates of the Gambino, Bonanno, Genovese and Lucchese crime families.

Hennen’s partner in all this, according to the indictments, was Marves “Vez” Fairley, a Mississippi-based sports bettor and business owner. Hennen and Fairley worked together to recruit and bribe players and place large wagers across multiple sportsbooks. They tested the waters with the Chinese league and Blakeney before expanding their operation stateside into the NCAA and NBA.

Although they are not affiliated with a specific organized crime group, Hennen and Fairley’s criminal endeavors share much in common with the methods of Rosenthal and Hill. The true extent of this new syndicate of fixers is currently unknown, but indictments are gradually revealing its nature. This group might not be the Mob, but it is organized crime.