Yakuza, also known as gokudō, are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media by request of the police, calls them bōryokudan, while the yakuza call themselves ninkyō dantai. The English equivalent for the term yakuza is gangster, meaning an individual involved in a Mafia-like criminal organization. The yakuza are known for their strict codes of conduct, their organized fiefdom nature and several unconventional ritual practices such as yubitsume or amputation of the left little finger. Members are often described as males, wearing "sharp suits" with heavily tattooed bodies and slicked hair. This group is still regarded as being among "the most sophisticated and wealthiest criminal organizations".
A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectively, in illegal, and possibly violent, behavior.
A drug cartel is any criminal organization with the intention of supplying drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises. The term was applied when the largest trafficking organizations reached an agreement to coordinate the production and distribution of cocaine. Since that agreement was broken up, drug cartels are no longer actually cartels, but the term stuck and it is now popularly used to refer to any criminal narcotics related organization.
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster. Gangs provide a level of organization and resources that support much larger and more complex criminal transactions than an individual criminal could achieve. Gangsters have been active for many years in countries around the world. Gangsters are the subject of many novels, films, and video games.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the fifth main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and the seventh installment overall. It was released in October 2004 for the PlayStation 2, in June 2005 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox, and in November 2010 for Mac OS X. The game is set within an open world environment that players can explore and interact with at their leisure. The story follows former gangster Carl "CJ" Johnson, who returns home following his mother's murder and is drawn back into his former gang and a life of crime while clashing with corrupt authorities and powerful criminals. Carl's journey takes him across the fictional U.S. state of San Andreas, which is heavily based on California and Nevada and encompasses three major cities: Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas.
Kazuo Taoka was one of the most prominent yakuza godfathers.
Grand Theft Auto Advance is a 2004 action-adventure game developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Rockstar Games. The eighth instalment in the Grand Theft Auto series, it was released for the Game Boy Advance on 26 October 2004. The game takes place in Liberty City, the same setting used for Grand Theft Auto III, to which it serves as a prequel. The story, set one year before Grand Theft Auto III, follows small-time criminal Mike's quest for revenge after his partner's supposed death, which leads him to become entangled in a world of organised crime, gang warfare, and corruption.
The Black Mafia, also known as the Philadelphia Black Mafia (PBM), Black Muslim Mafia and Muslim Mob, was a Philadelphia-based African-American organized crime syndicate. The organization began as a small criminal collective, known for holding up neighborhood crap games and dealing in the illegal drug business, but at its height of operation until about 1975, it managed to consolidate power and control a large portion of criminal activity in various African-American neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia, the Delaware Valley, and South Jersey, including Atlantic City and Camden. In addition to drug trafficking, burglary, and armed robbery, the Black Mafia was also engaged in traditional organized crime activities such as extortion, racketeering, prostitution, loansharking, number running and other illegal gambling rackets.
A crime boss, also known as a crime lord, Don, gang lord, kingpin, godfather, or criminal mastermind, is a person in charge of a criminal organization. A boss typically has absolute or nearly absolute control over the other members of the organization, is greatly feared for their ruthlessness and willingness to take lives to exert their influence and profits from the criminal endeavours in which the organization engages.
A Grand Theft Auto clone is a subgenre of open world action-adventure video games, characterized by their likeness to the Grand Theft Auto series in either gameplay, or overall design. In these types of open world games, players may find and use a variety of vehicles and weapons while roaming freely in an open world setting. The objective of Grand Theft Auto clones is to complete a sequence of core missions involving driving and shooting, but often side-missions and minigames are added to improve replay value. The storylines of games in this subgenre typically have strong themes of crime, violence and other controversial elements such as drugs and sexually explicit content.
A crime family is a unit of an organized crime syndicate, particularly in Italian organized crime, often operating within a specific geographic territory. In its strictest sense, a family is a criminal gang, operating either on a unitary basis or as an organized collection of smaller gangs. In turn, a family can be a sole "enterprise" or part of a larger syndicate or cartel. Despite the name, most crime families are generally not based on or formed around actual familial connections, though many members may in fact be related to one another.
The Cleveland crime family or Cleveland Mafia is the collective name given to a succession of Italian-American organized crime gangs based in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. A part of the Italian-American Mafia phenomenon, it operates in the Greater Cleveland area. Founded about 1920, leadership turned over frequently due to a series of power grabs and assassinations. Stability emerged in 1930 after Frank Milano became boss. The organization underwent significant decline in the last years of boss John T. Scalish. After his death in 1976, Irish mobster Danny Greene attempted to take over the Cleveland crime family. A violent gang war broke out which drew significant law enforcement attention. Significantly reduced in membership and influence, the Cleveland crime family nearly ceased to exist in the 1990s after a number of high-ranking members were imprisoned. The organization is believed by law enforcement to be extremely small in the 21st century, although attempting to rebuild.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, African-American organized crime emerged following the large-scale migration of African Americans to major cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and later the West Coast. In many of these newly established communities and neighborhoods, criminal activities such as illegal gambling, speakeasies and bootlegging were seen in the post-World War I and Prohibition eras. Although the majority of these businesses were operated by African Americans, it is often unclear the extent to which these operations were run independently of the larger criminal organizations of the time.
In 2010, a number of events have taken place in the organized crime world. On the very first day of the year reporter Jose Luis Romero was kidnapped for reporting on the Mexican Mafia. While investigating the kidnapping police man Jesus Escalante was killed. Due to the Mexican Drug War Mexico is one of the most active countries for organized crime activity. The Mexican Drug War is an armed conflict taking place between rival drug cartels and government forces in Mexico. Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for quite some time, they have become more powerful since the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.
Primarily, organized crime in France is based in its urban, major cities such as Marseille, Grenoble, Paris, and Lyon. Organized criminals are collectively known as the French Mob and singularly known as les beaux voyous operating within Le Milieu also called today Grand banditisme.
The Russian mafia has frequently been a subject of works in popular culture.
