Original Gangsters, a True Crime Talk Podcast
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Hosted by veteran crime reporter, documentarian, and award-winning author Scott Burnstein, Original Gangsters Podcast tells the current and past stories of La Cosa Nostra, one percent biker clubs, drug cartels, Canadian crime, urban crime, and more, with insightful analysis and educated commentary. Each week, Scott sits down with former gangsters, journalists, authors, law enforcement members, and lawyers to deep dive a specific topic, figure, or group in organized crime. Simply put, Original Gangsters Podcast is the ultimate place for organized crime news and history.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Scott Bernstein turns firsthand testimony and investigative memory into a detailed map of organized crime's people, institutions, and unresolved claims.
Original Gangsters Podcast follows organized crime through the people who investigated it, lived near it, or confronted it directly. Host Scott Bernstein favors extended interviews and pointed follow-ups, moving between the Detroit crime family, New Jersey mob operations,…
A mob prosecutor faces the man he convicted; you get their competing memories.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Mickey Cohen's Los Angeles underworld story is framed through the Hollywood mythology that helped keep it alive.
Mickey Cohen comes through as a Los Angeles mob figure who understood the value, and the danger, of attention. The episode places him in the city's mid-to-late-1940s underworld, linking him to Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill while keeping the focus on a gangster whose public…
A clear, shadowed account of Stadnik's rise, Toronto ambitions, and the mythology around Mambouche.
Original Gangsters uses Walter Nurgut Stadnik's ascent to reconsider how Canada's Hells Angels came to be understood in public. Stadnik is framed as a figure shut out by some 1% clubs early on, then brought into the Hells Angels in the early 1980s, where he helped steady and…
A prosecutor's ground-level account of the federal case that ended Harry "Taco" Bowman's run with the Outlaws.
Harry "Taco" Bowman anchors Scott Bernstein's conversation with retired federal prosecutor Rick Convertino on the federal case against the Outlaws.
A Montreal mafia power struggle comes into focus through arrests, prison pressure, and competing theories about the Rizzuto family's future.
Montreal's major mafia bust opens onto the real question: whether it ended the Rizzuto crime family or signaled a transfer of power inside it.
A grounded conversation on Hell's Kitchen violence, Westie ambition, and the mob politics around the Jacob Javits Center.
The Westies episode follows Jimmy Coonan and the Westies through a Hell's Kitchen shaped by old violence and made more frightening by disappearances. T.J.
A brisk look at Montreal's shifting underworld and the port turf that gives the Rap Pack leverage.
This episode stays on the modern-day Canadian gangland scene, with Scott Bernstein and Ken Pereira tracing the conflict around the Hells Angels, Blood Family Mafia, the Rizzuto mob, street gangs, and the Rap Pack Mob.
A lively mob-and-politics conversation that keeps history and power in the same frame.
Original Gangsters Podcast uses this episode to trace the overlap between politics and organized crime, with Scott Bernstein guiding a conversation with Eric Desenhal about Wise Guys in the White House.
A Genovese-family discussion that maps West Side names and relationships with insider detail.
Scott Bernstein and retired FBI agent Mike Campy make the Genovese-family case feel most alive when they stay with the names, relationships, and recorded conversations that actually shaped it.
Crime stories built from motive and consequence.
Cartel stories with the machinery exposed.
Mob history with case-file grit.
Scott Bernstein and Jimmy Bucciolato map the current state of the American Mafia family by family, starting with New York’s Genovese, Colombo, Gambino, Lucchese, and Banano administrations.
Jimmy Bucciolato and Scott Bernstein talk with writer Stephen Marsh about Seiji Low, whom Marsh calls the "most underappreciated gangland legend" of the last quarter century.
Scott Bernstein frames the episode around La Presse reporting that Valosphere, a major Quebec trucking company tied to contaminated-soil hauling, may have been taken over by the Hells Angels.
Original Gangsters Podcast brings on Vincent "Gigi" Marino, a former Boston mob soldier who says he spent 28 years inside since 1996 and is only months out.
Scott Bunting speaks with former FBI agent Donald Brutnell about organized crime work in Detroit and New Haven, including surveillance at Detroit’s Anchor Bar and the FBI’s use of Title III wiretaps after the 1968 law.
Original Gangsters Podcast host Scott Bernstein interviews retired FBI agent Mike Campi, who says he was "the tip of the spear" in federal cases against the Genovese crime family and is promoting Mafia Takedown.
Scott Bernstein brings on Eric Dezenhall to discuss Wise Guys in the White House, a book built around the overlap of presidents, organized crime, and political power.
Scott Bernstein interviews former Hamilton Police Officer Paul Manning, who says he started at 18 in the military police, worked in Northern Ireland, and later moved into undercover work at the Met in 1998.
Original Gangsters Podcast centers on the planned September 1979 Mafia Commission meeting at Gurney's in Montauk, Long Island, which the FBI prepared to wiretap before it was canceled.
Scott Bernstein brings Ken Pereira back for another Canadian underworld update.
The Outlaws clubhouse was a fortress: concrete walls, steel doors, weapons cache, and snuff films for sale.
Host Scott Bernstein and Montreal expert Ken Pereira break exclusive news that incarcerated Rizzuto family godfather Leo Rizzuto used a prison FaceTime to run a post-arrest reorganization meeting attended by 24+ associates in St.
The dismemberment thing became a bonding thing—how far are you willing to go with me?
Jimmy Bucciolato and Scott Bernstein welcome Debra Bonello back to the home studio to talk through the recent arrests of El Mayo Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez.
Jimmy Bucciolato is back.
Scott Bernstein traces Walter "Nurgut" Stadnik from Hamilton and the early 1980s into a 37-year run as national president of the Hells Angels in Canada.
Original Gangsters podcast features 89-year-old Eddie Cox, a Kansas City organized crime legend who inspired the film King of New York.
Scott Bernstein and Dr.
Scott Bernstein and former State Police Col.
Janet Uhlar, a Boston resident, registered nurse, and author of two books on the American Revolution, says she was seated on the 2013 Whitey Bulger jury despite knowing little about organized crime.
Scott Bernstein introduces Giovanni Rocco as a former FBI undercover agent who went inside the DeCavalcante crime family, tracked Charlie Stango, and helped bring down a major part of the organization.
Jimmy, Scott, and Benny present a deep-dive into Eddie Nash, LA's most powerful 1980s crime boss.
Original Gangsters Podcast asks whether John Gotti was involved in the Giovanni Falcone assassination, using Maurizio Avola’s claim that Gotti sent a bomb maker to Sicily in 1992.
Scott Bernstein links Shane Hennin, alias Sugar Shane, to an alleged NBA and college basketball point-shaving scheme that ESPN tied together in late February and that now includes Malik Beasley, Jontae Porter, and Terry Rozier.
The show turns back to Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance.
Gary Jenkins, ex-mob buster and Kansas City historian, discusses the recently-released Eddie Cox (89), a legendary criminal figure whose story bridges Black and Italian organized crime networks.
Scott Bernstein breaks original reporting on a historic peace summit between Leonardo Rizzuto (Sicilian mafia family) and Marty Robert (Hells Angels global powerbroker) on December 11, 2024, ending a 2.5-year gang war in Quebec/Ontario.
A 50-year retrospective on the 1974 September bust of Philadelphia's Black Mafia (PBM), a major organized crime syndicate law enforcement ignored until 1972.
Scott Bernstein hosts a unique true crime episode featuring prosecutor Rick Convertino and defendant Novi Tocco meeting for the first time in 30 years since Operation Gametax, the 1996 federal prosecution of the Detroit Mafia (Tocco family).
Scott Bernstein interviews Sean Nam, author of 'Murder on Federal Street,' about Tyrone Everett, an undefeated Philadelphia junior lightweight who lost a disputed WBC title fight to Alfredo Escalera on November 30, 1976.