America's Most Dangerous Prison Gang: The Aryan Brotherhood
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It's 1996 at Marion Federal Prison in Illinois, and an inmate has gotten into some trouble with his own gang, the DC Blacks.

Scared they're going to attack him, he seizes on a course of action. He assaults a white inmate and gets sent to the hole, figuring if you're in isolation, you're a pretty hard target to reach. Way tougher to kill than if you're in Gen Pop. The prison, like many others, is divided along racial lines. And when there's no retaliation for the beating, a dozen other members of the DC Blacks, sensing weakness, attacks half a dozen white inmates in the yard. Things are spiraling.

Word of these incidents eventually makes its way over to ADX Florence, the supermax in Colorado, America's most notorious and high-security prison for the most dangerous inmates. Serving time there are two of the most powerful convicts in the entire U.S. prison system, Barry the Baron Mills and T.D. the Hulk Bingham, two of the highest-ranking members in the most feared prison gang in America, the Aryan Brotherhood.

You see, although there's only 100 of them, or maybe 150 full-fledged official members, the Aryan Brotherhood controls thousands. And they're known at one point to have been responsible for 18% of murderers in the prison system, though they only make up 1% of the inmates. They're highly organized and highly efficient in killing, in or out of prison. And they're also merciless and brutal. Communication between the top-ass of the Brotherhood, known as the Commission, is tough though.

Prison officials keep them highly isolated and locked down, fearing the chaos they can cause. It's kind of shocking they can even communicate at all. But the Brotherhood always finds a way. Bingham sent a letter to Mills. It reads simply, Another coded message is then sent out to all the Aryan Brotherhood members throughout the entire prison. It's written in three different ways to make sure it gets out.

Once with a sophisticated coded language, another with prison slang, and finally, by invisible ink using urine. It's just four simple words, but they carry weight. War with DC Blacks. The message bounces around a few prisons before finally reaching Lewisburg Prison in August of 1997.

And then the Aryan Brotherhood gets to work, plotting a surprise attack. Lookouts are deployed, and several Aryan Brotherhood hitmen, including a high-ranking member, stab to death two DC Blacks members with homemade shanks, including a leader, and seriously injure three more. It's a full-on race war, and it's a firm reminder of how dangerous the Aryan Brotherhood is, and how capable they are of getting to anyone, anywhere, at any time, no matter how powerful they may be.

And the gang, which started as a, quote, white self-defense group in a single penitentiary, has now evolved into a gigantic criminal syndicate across the country with prolific and profitable operations in drug trafficking, gambling, protection, extortion, and much more in prisons across the country.

And even on the street, where they do everything from armed robbery, murder for hire, gun trafficking, and meth manufacturing. Quote, it's an empire, a former high-ranking member who turned on the gang, said in a 2012 confessional interview. That's what I helped it become. This is the Underworld Podcast. Underworld Podcast

Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, the weekly organized crime podcast that is not pro-race war. Just want to be clear. Well, I'm not. I can't speak for Sean. We are a narrative storytelling audio experience that delves into the world of global organized crime with a new episode every week hosted by two journalists who have reported on this stuff all over the globe. Myself, Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean. We're not actually sure where he stands on the race war. Williams. Very nice. As always, welcome.

bonus episodes on patreon.com. So it's in a world podcast or sign up on Spotify or on iTunes for the low, low price of $5 a month, which gets you even more content underworld pod.com for merch, t-shirts, all that. And the underworld podcast at gmail.com for tips, a wiggy, wherever you are, call me back, bud. Let's make some episode magic. Now.

We like to correct our errors here. And in the last episode, I said that Bugsy Siegel was killed in his living room in Los Angeles. It was not his living room. It was his paramour at the time, Virginia Hill. So I got that wrong. We got a comment about that. We also got a comment. I mean, I just have to go on a rant about this. Someone saying that this conspiracy theory that there's no movies about the Jewish mafia. It's like a Jewish conspiracy to hide it. Buddy.

It takes two seconds to Google. Like there's a movie about Mickey Cohen 10 years ago with Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling called gangster squad, where he's the bad guy. But like, there's plenty, the Godfather one, one of the main bad guys, Bo green, biggest mafia movie ever. Godfather two. Hi,

hyman roth you know who's they don't even hide it right he's killed coming back from israel you know bugsy about bugsy siegel nominated for 11 oscars in 1991 i actually thought it was kind of boring to be honest with you i don't know if you've seen it sean no no i haven't but uh gangster squad's good though that's a little it's kind of good gangster squad's good

I mean, one of my favorites is Casino, where obviously the main character is a Jewish guy, Bobby De Niro. And then also he plays a Jew in one of the most critically acclaimed mafia movies ever by one of the most famous filmmakers of all time, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, which is like four hours long and entirely about the Jewish mafia in the Lower East Side.

One of my personal favorites, too, was Mobsters, Lansky and Siegel. There's like three biopics on Meyer Lansky. One that came out a couple years ago. Bunch of old movies about Murder, Inc., Arnold Rothstein. Not to mention all the prestige mafia TV shows. You got Heshy on the Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire's got Rothstein and Meyer and Bugsy. Even Peaky Blinder, right, has Tom Hardy as like an Orthodox Jewish gang boss. So...

to that commenter like you've got to try harder but give us like an alex jones that's not that many you got any more because i'm still i'm still there's more there's more i just don't i mean dutch dutch schultz is in a bunch of them but like what i'm saying is just just try harder you know give us like an alex jones the frogs are turning gay thing like this is you can do better for conspiracy theories than one that takes five seconds to google and see that it's wrong anyway

Where were we? Ah, yes. American prison race wars. I'm going to be honest, Sean. I think if I end up in prison, I could probably make friends with everyone, you know, like cross all the racial and gang lines and just kind of banter with the boys. Like I'm a charming guy. People, people like me. Yeah. You might struggle with the conspiracy theories inside though. I don't know. I mean, there's, there's probably a few of them going around, but yeah, the charming, the charming bridge builder staple of the prison drama. You could be that guy.

I'm sure they're up for lively debate, but let's get it going. The year is 1964 in America, and the civil rights movement is at its peak, culminating with a landmark legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is trying to end race discrimination, desegregate society, and bring people of all races together.

But inside San Quentin Prison, the most violent prison in California, the opposite is happening. The black inmates are forming their own group, eventually dubbed the Black Gorilla Family. And then a group of white inmates formed their own group called the Diamond Tooth Gang, apparently because they had pieces of glass embedded in their teeth that shined in the sun. I mean, genuine question, how...

how does one do that? Like with glue or do you just wedge it between your teeth? And I'm going to say, I'm going to say this is, this is pretty gay. This is pretty Louis Couture's, you know, gold grills. That's also quite gay. I mean, you can say a lot when you live in New Zealand and no one can find you, bud. But, uh,

You know, you also had the Mexican mafia or La M.A., which had formed in the late 50s and later another Mexican gang, Nuestra Familia, which formed to actually protect against La M.A. We should actually do episodes on both of them. I mean, they're crazy stories. If nothing else, to make fun of that movie where Shia LaBeouf plays out La M.A. hitman and had to do like the cholo accent, which is a bad movie, but it also kind of kind of rose. Of course you didn't. And

Initially, this group, the white group is composed of mostly like bikers, think handlebar mustaches and beards. But there are a few neo-Nazis with swastika tattoos and that whole jazz. Yeah, I mean, maybe take out the swastikas a bit, but this is pretty much a Tom of Finland collage, isn't it? Maybe. They end up linking up with some other white inmates and form the Aryan Brotherhood, also known as the Brandt.

Now, obviously, there's always been prison groups or gangs, people who linked up to protect themselves, but these groups are aligning exclusively by race. And soon enough, the violence explodes at San Quentin, which starts being described as a gladiator school. I'm sure you've heard that term before to describe other prisons.

So yeah, all these gangs forming up and they get the shiv in and fighting for power and control. It's funny because before we started recording, Sean actually kept talking about how the Aryan Brotherhood was his favorite gang. And me personally, I find it weird for adults to have a favorite gang in the first place, but I thought it was a really, really strange choice. I mean, you can see my previous comments for reference on this issue. I can change them, Danny. I can change them. Anyway, all of these gangs are also dead set on recruiting more members.

preying on new vulnerable inmates as they arrive, which makes sense. You know, a new guy, you need protection, especially when everyone else is in a gang. The Aryan Brotherhood, though, they go about things in an entirely different way than most of the gangs. They only go after the most capable and violent white inmates to be full-fledged members.

They even have a pledge that recruits are given. Quote, Okay, Dale, put some medieval music over there. That slayed.

Like, like a lute? Is that what you mean? Yeah, I'm thinking of lutes.

You know, like when people say, you know, Dre, but medieval play playlists on YouTube, that kind of thing. I want that. Okay. Okay. So hopefully he's put that in, which, you know, that, that poem, I didn't figure these guys for pledges and poetry, but you know, to, to each their own. And let's slow this down. So we've got guys with handlebar mustaches hooking up in prison and writing poetry. I mean, you know what I'm going to say? All these guys need to do is ditch their silly race war. And they've got a deeply fulfilling literary club. It would be lovely. Yeah.

By 1975, the brotherhood expands to most, if not all of California state prisons and are actively involved in a race war where dozens are killed. Okay, there we go. 1975 is also the year where Michael Thompson gets the prison for helping murder two drug dealers. Thompson is 23 years old. He's six foot four, 300 pounds and a former high school football star. The dude is a beast. He's up for parole after 10 years. So he mostly wants to keep to himself at first. Doesn't claim any affiliations.

But a big boy like that is going to get noticed. And he's soon a target for the Hispanic and black gangs. They attack him in the yard a bunch of times.

He's eventually transferred to Folsom County, another California prison, where he hears the train coming around the bend, but there's no sunshine. Since, like San Quentin, the prison has got a full-on race war raging. He didn't sing about that, did he? No, no, no. No, he did. He left that part out of the song. Thompson arrives, and on his first day, no one speaks to him until a leader of the Black Gorilla family taunts him, telling him to come to the yard tomorrow ready.

The reason I'm getting into Thompson is because he ends up being a big part of a big article in the New Yorker in 2004 from none other than David Grand, which is one of the more thorough sources on the Genghis article. It's called The Brand. Thompson's also done a bunch of other interviews on the podcast circuit recently in the last couple of years.

He was on, I think, old Nat Geo and A&E docs. In some of the newer interviews, he actually says he was approached by a member of the Black Panthers to join the group, even though he looks like a white guy, though apparently he's part Native American. So not really sure what to make of that. But this is the story that was in The New Yorker, so I think we're going to go with that. I mean, do you just imagine being a New Yorker staffer, like just rocking up to editorial meetings on a Monday morning like, guys...

I got three ideas, right? One's a murder on a 17th century galleon. Another's treating depression with SD. And I've got a third one on leader of a prison gang. Like,

Actually, thinking about it, that's exactly why I pitch into the void every day. It's a fun life if you can make it work. Oh, God, yeah. So Thompson, much like a New Yorker editor, he makes a shiv in his office or cell that night. And the next day, when the guy who threatened him and another black gorilla family try to take him out, he stabs both, one nearly to death. After that, several white inmates, including T.D. Bingham, who we mentioned in the open, approach him and they ask him if he wants to join the Aryan Brotherhood.

He claims he was hesitant because he wasn't down with the racism, which we'll get into later, but he knows he needs protection to make it through his sentence. He says it was more than just protection, though. It was like being led into a sanctuary, and he immediately became the man, like a shot caller. By the way, shot caller, great prison movie about the Aryan Brotherhood, starring none other than Jamie Lannister. Yeah, actually a good movie, and another role where he gets to have sex with his sister, am I right? Jesus, Sean.

Thompson goes on to say that to become a member, you have to make your bones, which means either kill someone or at a minimum, seriously mess them up, usually another inmate. There's also a blood in blood out oath, which means you don't leave the gang unless you're dead. Although I've read some ex members say that the official blood oath and the pledge we mentioned earlier, it's basically nonsense made up by law enforcement.

But yeah, I kind of feel like most gangs, especially prison gangs, do the blood in, blood out thing. Again, another great prison movie, blood in, blood out. Now, usually new members get a probationary period of around a year. But since Thompson was such a physical specimen and showed real skill with a knife, he's voted in immediately. After getting in, the new members have to get a tattoo to be branded, though I think this has changed in recent years. Usually the initials AB, Swastika, or 666 to symbolize the beast.

uh thompson also gets a uh he gets a green shamrock which is also a symbol of the gang all thompson had to do was show the tattoo on his hand and he was instantly in charge of white inmates just like that yeah shamrock with a swastika in it conor mcgregor's dream hey i mean connor is basically progressive compared to like other guys in the in the ufc and for those press conferences he gets a pass for me you know like the uh the who the fuck is that like that i mean come on you can't beat that connor's just he's just uh

You know, and his ridiculous Instagram stories where he's clearly on drugs. You can't beat that. Yes. Thompson also began being groomed for the leadership. He starts on the Aryan Brotherhood curriculum, which yes, they do actually have one. He's reading books like Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Machiavelli's The Prince, which, you know, it's always kind of corny when people have like the mob boss or the gangster reading that stuff. All right, guys, let's talk Factor Meals.

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Every town has a dark side.

This is Andrew Fitzgerald from the Everytown Podcast, where every single week we dive into insane and mysterious true crime stories, most of which you've never heard of. Stories like the bizarre disappearance of Tyler Davis in Columbus, Ohio, a 29-year-old father trying to find his way back to his hotel when he disappeared and was never heard from again,

and Elizabeth Shove from Lugoff, South Carolina, who was abducted from her driveway by a madman and taken to his underground bunker in the woods. We give you all the details you're interested in hearing about without any fluff or fillers, because ain't nobody got time for that. We cover everything from psychopaths to poltergeists, so go check out the Everytown podcast, because Everytown, no matter how nice it may seem, has a dark side.

The information that I am providing today is coming from higher dimensional consciousness. Things got so weird during 2020 and it wasn't just the QAnon conspiracy theorists. This new age channel told us... Donald Trump is a massive and powerful lightworker. A lightworker? And then what about this Oprah endorsed...

best-selling feminist health icon talking about heavy metals that are in vaccines that make our bodies literally into an antenna with 5G. As we continued studying what we now call cun spirituality, it only got more intense. This is the cult of Baphomet. This is Molokite worshipping stuff. It gets very gory in the basement. And it culminated with that shaman dude showing up at the Capitol insurrection. Hey!

But it didn't stop there. Every week on Conspiratuality Podcast, we track the overlaps between New Age spirituality and far-right conspiracy cults. But I think, what's the other one they always talk about? The newer one. Oh, 48, 48 Laws of Power. Yeah, maybe Infinite Jest. No, I don't think that's part of their curriculum.

Besides reading the books, though, where terrible entrepreneur Instagram accounts get their quotes, he's also taught how to kill without a second thought. In an AB instruction manual that sees by authorities, it states, quote, the smell of fresh human blood can be overpowering, but killing is like having sex. The first time is not so rewarding, but it gets better and better with practice, especially when one remembers that it's a holy cause. Another member also tells authorities that members study books of anatomy so they would know how to kill better.

By the early 80s, the gang spreads out of California into other states, Texas, Illinois, Kansas, and as far east as Georgia and Pennsylvania. When a member arrives, a full-fledged member arrives at a new prison, they often carry out a demonstration killing to terrorize other inmates and set the tone. And they do the opposite of a lot of other gangs who, you know, would try to hide their murders or whatever it is. They want to flaunt it, even in front of the guards.

Just to show that they're crazy, they do not care about consequences, even if it's a new life sentence. In early 1983, the AB commits one of their most infamous acts. A member is being led down a hall while shackled by a guard that apparently disrespected him before.

Jeez.

that two guards have been killed on the same day, and it cements the AB reputation as word spreads through the prison system that these guys are not to be trifled with. Now, there's only really 100 or 150 fully pledged members of the Aryan Brotherhood at any time, but there's thousands of associates, they call them peckerwoods, that operate as like a farm team or in different farm teams, different street gangs or prison gangs. They get protection, they get the good prison jobs, and they get other perks of being with the gang.

If you guys remember how we talked about the Hells Angels and, you know, the other motorcycle clubs, the puppet clubs and whatnot, it's similar to that. There's other white gangs that are basically that for the AB, like the Nazi lowriders.

But even with only 100 or so members, by 1983, the organization is having some issues. Basically, that it's hard to organize. And that's because each Aryan Brotherhood member has to vote on literally every big decision. So with these dudes spread out all over so many prisons, it might take weeks to make a decision and things are just taking too long.

Sometimes it would take eight weeks to get a vote on whether or not they should kill a guy. And it's, you know, decision lag right there. So they decide they need to get better organized. Yeah, Swiss style democracy. It's not for everyone. Yeah, not even the Swiss really, right? Not really the Swiss. No, they can't do it. At the time, there's a few AB members that are on trial for assaulting other inmates. And they decide to act as their own lawyers and subpoena some other AB members as witnesses.

So a bunch of them end up being gathered at the same place for this trial, which is Chino Prison in California, which, you know, it's a pretty solid move. Makes it a lot easier for them to communicate and come to this big decision, which is that there's going to be a council of 12 members to manage the brand.

Each ruling council member is going to be elected by majority vote. And on top of that, there's going to be a thing called the commission made up of three members that oversee the council. According to Thompson, they're going to loosely model it on the Italian mafia. And the AB goes further. There's going to be two councils and commissions, one for the federal system and one for the state system. In the federal system, two of the commission members are going to be the Aryan Brotherhood's two most powerful members, Barry the Baron Mills and Tyler Davis Bingham, better known as T.D. Bingham. The

The Baron, which...

You know, we have to admit, is a solid nickname for a prison gang leader. He's born in 1948 and is first seriously arrested when he's 19 for stealing a car. He's sent to something called an honorary farm, which I imagine is like a prison work program. He escapes from that after a few months and decides to rob a 7-Eleven, gets caught and is sentenced for five years for that one, and sent to San Quentin, and there he links up with a newly formed Aryan Brotherhood. Yeah, I've got to say, I'm putting a slight flaw in the justice system here. I mean, anyone who does anything really bad

and you just throw them in this big prison with all their other buddies with Hitler tats and handlebar mustaches. I mean, what you've got there is a perfect breeding ground for Nazis kissing each other on the lips. New Zealand, man. Aren't you maybe going to South America soon? I am definitely going to South America in one year. So it's going to be different vibes. Yeah. Anyway.

After he gets out of San Quentin in 1977, he plots a bank robbery with some other ex-cons he met in San Quentin, and the plan is for the robbers to get away with $2 million in cash, but, you know, best laid plans. They walk away with only $21,000, and they also get ratted out, and the Baron eventually gets sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, where he starts getting into serious trouble.

He's convicted in 1979 of nearly beheading another inmate over a gambling debt. Authorities also say he liked to crochet in his cell, which, you know, that's interesting. While also composing a list of enemies to kill, which sounds more for his personality. Here's a quote from Mills from one of his various trials. We live in a different society than you do. There is justified violence in our society. I'm here to tell you that. I'm here to tell all you that.

Then we've got T.D. Bingham, a.k.a. The Hulk. His nickname comes from the fact that he is extremely large, which, you know, obvious, and could bench 500 pounds. Bingham is, like, very physically imposing, even for someone in federal lockup. He's quick to violence and anger. A former AB member once said that he was the most violent person he'd ever met. He's constantly getting into fights, really savagely attacking people. Bingham spent most of his teenage years in and out of juvenile facilities, working,

First getting arrested for petty theft when he's 19. He gets out of a more serious charge at 19 and then gets arrested only a few years later for armed robbery of a bank. And also weirdly, he's like part Jewish and doesn't hide it. He's a star of David tattoo on one arm and a swatch to cut tattoos on the other, which is confusing. You know, it's a confused guy in interviews. Thompson talks about how the brotherhood actually isn't really about white supremacy. Its main thing now is for power and doing anything to get it. So,

Are they actually white supremacists? Like, do they actually do anything outwardly racist other than obviously having swastikas on their arms? But is like race just an easy way to separate folks behind bars these days? I don't know. I think it definitely has elements of that. There are definitely neo-Nazis in it and skinheads and, you know, they've killed a

They killed that Jewish prisoner like 10 years ago or 20 years ago because after like two or three days and they definitely attack blacks, but they have alliances with the Mexican gangs. So it's weird. I can't say for certain, but I think they definitely – there's a large component of that. Is it the end all be all? No, because they work – obviously they work with Mexican gangs and they're more interested in power and money. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, every interview with these guys, it goes back and forth. Some of them say that it's really about that. Some of them say they are about that. Some of them say some of them are about that. So it's a hard thing to parse how much conviction there is in a lot of them.

Another early member of the AB who becomes a commissioner and then would actually go on to leave the gang and reveal a whole lot is a guy by the name of John Greshner. He's from Minnesota. You know, he has an absentee dad. He runs around in greaser street gangs as a kid, and he gets popped for a whole bunch of felonies in his teens and early 20s, including armed robbery and aggravated assaults.

Gressner escapes from prison in Minnesota, gets into a gunfight with a police officer, and while in federal lockup in Indiana, he meets Barry Mills, who recruits him. He joins in 1977 when it's still a pretty small group. At that point, the gang is still just really in the California state system, but other members who are getting out of the state pens, they are recidivists, and soon after they're getting tagged on federal charges because they're doing stuff like bank robberies,

Drugs, guns, they end up being shipped all over the states, which you know what happens next, obviously expansion. Greshner helps the gang really get going. He works on their banking and collection strategy, how to divvy up and make the money. And according to him, the AB's racism ends up coming second to power and profit. And they kind of use it as a calling card for other skinhead and white inmates to kind of feel this connection.

He also claims that, again, this is one guy who was in the gang claiming it. So, you know, make of it what you will.

He claims that some AB members practice a racist version of an old Viking raider religion called Asatru or Asatru. I don't know how to pronounce it. He ends up leaving the gang in 1999, talks a whole lot. But one of the guys we mentioned earlier, Michael Thompson, he ends up leaving the gang a lot earlier in the 1980s. And that has to do with another policy that they enact when they're forming these hierarchical structures in the early 80s. And that's what to do about snitches. Now, obviously, like most gangs, snitches

snitches get killed. In the early 1980s, though, a former AB member testifies against one of the commissioners, but he's in protective custody and the organization can't get to him.

So they order a recently poor old member to go after his family. And the whole thing is that like, if they can't get to you, they're going to go after someone in your family until they get to someone. That's the policy. And he goes to the guy's family's house and shoots his dad in the head three times, killing him. This is that new policy in action. We can't get you. We're going to get everyone in your family until we can get to you. Shortly after the killing Thompson, who was at this point, a member of the council, he defects from the AB and he later ends up testifying against the hit man. Apparently,

But his whole thing was that he was against that. He did not want to do it. He argued against the move for days, thinking it was wrong to kill people on the outside that aren't involved, but was overruled. By 1986, he's in the prison version of Witness Protection and his family has been relocated and hidden and he becomes the highest ranking defector at that time.

Increasingly, though, the Aryan Brotherhood starts looking to create a real criminal organization focused way more on making money than the race war ideology. Although, obviously, like we discussed, that's still a part. According to a declassified FBI report, the AB wanted to, quote, launch a cooperative effort of death and fear against staff and other inmates in order to take over the system. They want to control everything from drug trafficking to pimping to extortion to murder for higher contracts. A member of the Aryan Brotherhood would later say to investigators, quote,

The gang was no longer primarily bent on destroying blacks and the Jews and the minorities of the world, white supremacy and all that shit. It's a criminal organization first and foremost. I guess that's some kind of an argument for capitalism. Getting money, man. It unites us all, you know? Put aside your differences.

This is also, this is a quote from an SPLC write-up. In short order, the AB began taking over existing drugs and gambling operations run by white inmates throughout the federal prison system, Gressner said. The leaders of these rings were offered a stark choice. Join the federal AB and start taking orders and kicking back money to the commissioners or die.

Our old saying was one brother, meaning that one brother can walk into any joint and take it over. Any joint. Because the leaders of the other crews in there know that one brother has the entire brand behind him. So if they kill that one brother, sooner or later, he'll reach from the grave through us to get his revenge.

In the New Yorker article I mentioned, it goes into the detail of the story of a full-fledged member, a protégé of the baron, who shows up at Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas. He immediately goes to the yard shirtless and displays a giant Shamrock tattoo on his chest. A crowd of white inmates gather around him, and it's almost like he's a rock star. He then starts to take over the entire economy of the prison. First, he has his men go cell tier to cell tier and place a tax on the sale of pruno, which is prison wine, and then he has his men go cell tier to cell tier and place a tax on the sale of pruno, which is prison wine, and then he has his men go cell tier to cell tier and place a tax on the sale of pruno, which is prison wine,

Then he takes over the poker game that was being run. He establishes other gambling operations on every prison tier. For small games, the inmates pay their debt out of their commissary, you know, cigarettes, candy, whatever. In the high roller game, where you've got drug lords betting thousands, the tallies would be settled at the end of the month and an AB member at a prison would be paid. If the gambling decks weren't paid on time, the prisoners would be beaten with a metal pipe and then eventually killed if they still don't pay.

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At least try to be setting aside the

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Once the business of gambling was run by the mob, then the government decided they wanted in on the action. The result was a competition, the bureaucrats versus the bookmakers. Scratch and Win is a new podcast from the creators of The Big Dig. It's about this competition and about the fiercest competitor of them all, the state lottery that gave the world the scratch ticket. Find Scratch and Win from GBH News wherever you listen.

The money is all then funneled to the leaders of the AB. The guards also use the AB members as power brokers, knowing that their control was inevitable. And they do stuff like ask them if it's okay if a certain inmate can get back on the yard after being punished. Yeah, you've got to be a pretty big fan of gambling to be playing under those kind of conditions. I mean, yeah, pretty nuts. Speaking of which, actually, how's your crypto wallet looking?

Dude, all I do is lose. It is insane how much I lose. Not how much. I don't lose a lot. I think I lost my... I put a G in the last four days once the Trump coin stuff and I just lost it all going from various shit coin to various shit coin. You gotta be on the inside. What happened to the Trump coin thing? It went up and then it halved.

But, you know, I lost some on Melania coin. I lost some on a fake Baron coin. And then I lost a bunch last night on the JFK files coin. What the fuck is this? Dude, it's just, it's shit coins, dude. And I'm not on the inside. So I'm not doing so good. If you are on the inside, the underworldpodcast.gmail.com. Just let me know what your telegram groups. Let me just make back what I lost and we'll call it a day.

Anyway, the Aryan brother. I would definitely get murdered for losing in poker in prison within a week and a half. My God, yes. Me too. I can't even add up. Yeah.

Yeah, the Aryan Brotherhood also gets big into drug trafficking with people even referring to it as the Heroin Brotherhood. The prison authorities and feds eventually realized like this is a big problem and they start looking to isolate the top Aryan Brotherhood leaders by sending them to a then new style of prison called the Supermax. The first official Supermax opens in 1983. That's in Marion, Illinois. And then by the 90s, a bunch more open, including the infamous one ADX Florence in 1994.

In a supermax, the prison is locked down 23 hours a day. Prisoners don't have cellmates and barely interact with other inmates or guards. It's reserved for the most dangerous and powerful criminals. Sounds really nice, actually. This is you, Louis the Rudolph. He goes to that prison in Miami, right? But it's not a supermax. It's like a general pop one. Oh, okay.

That's a funny one. Watching him interact with people in America is always interesting. Somehow through all this, the AB still manages to do their thing. They develop a lot of ways of communicating, some as simple as passing messages through prison pipes to more sophisticated methods like using Morse code on the prison bars. The most sophisticated communication technique

They use biliteral cipher, which is a language invented by a 17th century philosopher that used two distinct alphabets depending on how the letters were drawn. And of course, the old standby, urine as invisible ink. Pretty difficult to write though. Never tried it, but I'll take your word for it. High security prisons cannot slow them down. At Folsom Prison, when AB leaders are sequestered from the general population, they have their associates just start indiscriminately stabbing people until the AB leaders are released.

A local prison official at Pelican Bay says that the prison officials are unable to stop the AB quote reign of terror. Now there's some other AB lore that involves the dealings with the Sicilian mafia. Supposedly the brother carries out multiple murder contracts from Lucchese crime family behind bars with one allegedly taking place right in front of the warden.

But the more interesting story, though, and I think that's the most well-known, is the stuff with John Gotti, which is all over the place and sources contradict each other left and right like crazy. Gotti enters Marion Federal Prison in 1992. Now, some accounts have it that Gotti struck up a business partnership with the A.B. and that this greatly increased their power and business on the outside. Other accounts have it that Gotti was just paying the A.B. protection money because in those federal prisons, they're the top dogs.

According to this telling of events, the AB stops protecting Gotti in 1994 because he doesn't keep a promise to Barry Mills about helping him find a lawyer to overturn a decades-old murder conviction. Then a few years later in 1996, a black inmate attacks and beats up Gotti. Now, the New York Times reports that this attack was actually done by the AB because Gotti had stopped paying that protection money and they wanted to extort him. Others say the black inmate simply attacked him. However, all accounts have it that after his attack,

Gotti offers the AB $500,000 to kill the inmate, which the brotherhood agrees to. And according to testimony from an AB inmate, the plan was to shoot this guy to death behind bars to show that AB could get anyone at any time and through any means. And Mills thought that the shooting would be the most shocking way to do it to show the rest of the prison population. But apparently they were not able to pull it off. Yeah.

You think all the murders they've done over the years, this one would be pretty easy? It's kind of strange. Yeah, yeah. You know, maybe they lost their innovation, their innovative techniques. You got to keep, it's like Apple, you know, you got to keep innovating, otherwise you lose.

So now, mid-90s, you've got serious AB members also. The few that are not serving life without parole, they're getting paroled because they're finishing up. The early days, they joined in the mid-70s or the 80s, 20, 25-year sentences. And they're getting out and they're really getting the outside operations going. They're tapped in all over the US. They're causing havoc. There's incidents killing police. Others involving drug dealers getting killed who weren't paying the taxes, etc.

But there's also drama among the higher-ups. Apparently, getting to know Gotti has a negative effect on Mills, who starts seeing himself as a godfather-like figure. Says Greshner, quote, Which, uh...

Kind of a Sean line there, but nice. Nice. Never happened, but nice. Maybe. Who knows? Also, this interview is from a publication called Intelligence Report, which I think is run by the SPLC. So that's where a lot of the Gressner quotes come from. I want to give them their source. And then I said to him, no, you, insert amazing quip here, you do that.

Yeah, that's very like 90s action hero line at the end of after the building blows up. Mills is no longer taking votes to decide things, even big things like ordering hits on other AB members. He's not consulting the rest of the commission. Worse, some of these hits are apparently over personal beefs.

Gressner's pissed enough that he eventually starts sending kites to other gang members about what's going on. And he even leaves the gang and soon testifies against other members. This is around 1999. Others, you know, I've seen stories that say he had a falling out with them. But either way, that's basically when he leaves. Wait, wait. So what's a kite? He sends kites to people? Kites are just like messages sent in prison. All right, cool. Yeah.

Meanwhile, the brand is still expanding, getting more involved with stuff on the outside, robberies, contract killings, drugs, identity fraud, everything they can get their hands on. They're like setting up warehouse headquarters and things like that. The feds are on it though. There've been some big investigations and charges in the decades prior, but in the early 2000s,

They hit them with a massive RICO indictment. And this time they're going after like the real higher ups in the leadership, but realizing that most of those guys are already facing life without parole. They're going to go after them with the express purpose of getting them the death penalty. So in

In December of 2002, the feds finally indict the Aryan Brotherhood on massive charges. 29 inmates are charged, including top leadership like Barry Mills and T.D. Bingham, several women who, you know, act as their mules, a few ex-cons, and one former prison guard are also arrested, bringing the total people charged to 40.

The charges include 32 murders and attempted murders. Then in 2005, an Aryan Brotherhood member in Colorado, Supermax, goes to the prison guards and confesses that he had been approached by the leaders of AB for technical advice on how to make bombs. The gang was apparently planning on terrorist attacks against federal facilities and the AB member thought it was a bit too far even for them.

The RICO trial doesn't end until 2006, and when it's finished, there's 30 convictions. T.D. Bingham and the Baron are convicted of murder, conspiracy, and racketeering. But the jury is deadlocked on the death penalty, and this is seen as a huge failure because these guys are not going to be killed. I always wonder how the hell you're supposed to let a jury decide on a death penalty. It seems a bit of a cop-out. If the state puts it on the table and says, nah, you guys have got to do it, like a bit of...

I don't know. It feels a bit cowardly in a way. I don't know. Thoughts? I actually don't know if it's different. I guess it's a federal charge, right? So, yeah, for some reason I had it in my head that judges decided it as well. I thought so. Yeah. But, you know, another thing that I'm not, I haven't done too much federal trial stuff, to be honest with you, involving the death penalty because all the stuff in New York really doesn't involve it. Chicago too. So, yeah, it's interesting.

There's a bunch of subsequent arrests and big charges brought over the next two decades, but the brand continues its expansion and its reign of terror. Barry Mills eventually dies in prison in 2018. T.D. Bingham, I think, is still alive in ADX in Florence. In 2020, 60 AB members and associates are arrested inside and out of prison for violent crimes, fraud, gun trafficking, and drug trafficking, and 80 pounds of meth are recovered. You know, meth just sounds like a natural thing for them to get into, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. That's all I get? Yeah. All right. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep Podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

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Literally just last week, it's revealed that three Aryan Brotherhood members that are already serving life sentences are on trial in what has been described as a secret federal trial. So not too many details are known, but I believe there's seven murder charges on that one. Can't say for certain, but I think many people still argue that the Aryan Brotherhood is the most powerful gang in the federal prison system. That or La Heme, but they're allies. So, you know, it is what it is.

Oh, also, Michael Thompson, who we mentioned earlier, the part Native American guy who we've talked about a bunch here, he gets paroled in 2019.

In 2015, a Mexican mafia hitman tried to kill him, but he was able to defend himself. He swears he's a peace activist now. But of course, you know, Mexican mafia hitman's doing it. Obviously, it's on the orders of the AB. I think he actually might be headed to prison now on some fraud charges that just popped up. I saw that in December of 2024. The charges popped up earlier, but he got, I think, sentenced in 2024.

But yeah, that's the Aryan Brotherhood for you. Yeah, crazy. I'd only known about these guys from Shot Caller and some Berlin gay bars, but this was really fascinating. Yeah, Shot Caller, you can see it takes a lot of scenes from real life of stuff that happened and uses it. And I think that guy is obsessed with prison movies and Aryan Brotherhood because he's another one too with...

I forget the actor, but it looks, I forget what it is. Maybe I forget what it's called too, but it looked felon felon. I haven't seen that. Oh yeah. No, I haven't seen it. Shot color is well done, but yeah, as always, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast for your bonuses, sign up on Spotify, iTunes as well. And you know, maybe start a, start a Jewish mafia movie club with your friends, you know, kick it off, watch four hours of once upon a time in America, which is,

you know, which is one of them. Quite good. And work your way backwards through all the, dude, I still love mobsters. It never gets mentioned. It's the story of Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel teaming up to create the commission and taking out Joe Masseria and the other boss whose name I'm blanking on. And it's awesome. Christian, young Christian Slater, dude, you can't beat that. Oh man, yeah. Until next week, thank you guys again as always for listening and enjoy.

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