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Private Notes
Lou travels to El Salvador, home of the second highest murder rate in the world, to meet the 18th Street, a ruthless, multi-ethnic, transactional criminal organisation engaged in a bloody war with rival gang MS-13. To find out what motivates the on-going war, Lou realizes he will have to meet their feared and infamous leader, Viejo Lin, and journey to Izalco Prison in Sonsonate, El Salvador, which houses 838 of the country’s most violent 18th Street gang members, including many of its feared inner circle.
Lou arrives in Manila, capital of the Philippines, to visit Bilibid, the world’s largest prison, and to infiltrate the powerful and much feared Commandos gang. Street gangs and prison gangs are separate in the Philippines, but one rule is clear: outsider access is forbidden. While there, Lou witnesses a ruthless initiation and learns that there is a dangerous gang war emerging both within and outside the walls of the penitentiary.
Lou visits in Albuquerque, USA, the largest city in the state of New Mexico, to meet one of the world’s newest and fastest growing prison gangs, the Burqueños, to witness first-hand their violent and secret recruiting process. While there, he discovers how the Burqueños’ power is threatening blood rival TCK, and attempts to score an exclusive interview with Jeff Padilla, the menacing gangster, mafia boss, and supposed shot caller for the Burqueños. However, with The Burqueños strict code of silence, Lou has his work cut out for him.
Naples, Italy, is viewed by many as the birth place of organized crime. Lou heads back to his own mother country on a mission to infiltrate one of the oldest, toughest and most opaque mafias of them all: the Camorra. At least 300 years old, the Camorra was reputedly built on tenets of respect, honor, and straight business, and yet these days it thrives on chaos. The police estimate that the drugs trade in the Secondigliano area of Naples alone nets Camorra gangsters over a billion Euros a year. Lou arrives in Naples in the midst of a violent inter-clan war, which rages throughout the extended region of Campagnia and discovers that for a new generation of Camorra bosses there is no honour amongst thieves.
Lou heads to Poland, home to more than 500 criminal gangs, to infiltrate the shadowy underworld of The Grypsers. Known as ‘The Smart Ones,’ they are a notoriously private and secretive prison gang that forms approximately 70% of the Polish prison population. Lou is on a quest to discover if The Grypsers control the Polish Mafia outside prison, or if the Polish Mafia control The Grypsers. Along the way he’ll visit some extraordinary Grypser bosses, an English speaking 'protected witness' who was tortured, scalped and left for dead after his debt to the Polish mafia went bad. His subsequent evidence has led to 30 gang members being put in prison, so he is now under permanent armed protection.
