The Brazilian Prison Gang Dominating South America: The PCC
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. 1993 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It starts like so many things do in this country with a soccer game. A tournament really in Tabate Prison.

It's the kind of place the authorities send the worst of the worst inmates, which is no small feat in Brazil, a country with a notoriously brutal and violent and just straight up horrific prison system. Even now, in 2022, every few months, you'll have stories of dozens of prisoners killed in random riots or gang wars. And back then, there's widespread torture, execution, suicide, just all that sort of stuff.

Less than a year before the soccer tournament in October 1992, one of the most horrific events to ever take place in the prison system there happens. The Carindero Massacre.

Carandiro is also one of the worst prisons in Brazil. Just insanely overcrowded with terrible conditions, knives everywhere. And it's actually inside the city of Sao Paulo, right? It's this booming city of business. Right smack inside is a prison with 7,000 prisoners overseen by only 100 guards, which means, of course, the prisoners pretty much run it. This particular day, the inmates rioted.

Not exactly an infrequent occurrence, but the military is called to put it down, and they do it viciously and excessively. 111 prisoners are killed by the military police after they storm the prison. Many are found to have been executed. Investigations show that only something like 500 shells are found to have been used, which means they were just lining people up and shooting them in the head. This shocks the country of Brazil and also sends a pretty brutal message to the inmates of Sao Paulo's jail cells.

All of this is in the back of the minds of the men in Tabate, which is like the ADX foreign supermax of Brazil. But for some reason, the warden at this prison decides to let the prisoners have a soccer tournament, and they form teams. One group of eight men names their teams the First Command of the Capital, the PCC for short.

and they win a few games before heading to the championship round. The eight guys on the PCC team, they're the only guys in the tournament from the actual city of Sao Paulo, according to journalist Leonardo Coutinho. The other prisoners, many of them from the outside of the city, they don't like them because of that. But this isn't the longest yard, and it's not going to be pretty or uplifting. There's all sorts of taunts and threats. The opposing team tells the PCC that they're going to drink their blood.

It's not the kind of thing you can let stand in a place like that. The PCC is led by a guy named Big Jelly, a real killer, and his co-captain is Little Caesar, a middle-class kid who caught his first body at 12 and goes on to become their chief executioner. As both teams are walking out to the pitch to play the game, the guards are nowhere to be seen. The PCC guys seize on the moment and attack, and within minutes have killed five members of the opposing team.

Remember, though, these victims aren't exactly easy marks. They're also killers and career criminals, the worst of the worst. As a Vanity Fair article from 2008 reads, quote,

Through the telegraph, they declared, we are united forever now. Whatever happens to one happens to all. We will never betray each other. We are brothers for life. But it's not just other prison gangs the PCC swear to take on. They're going to go after the prison guards, the prison officials, the politicians. They're going to go after the whole prison system. And they're going to do it brutally and with discipline.

And then they're going to go after the police, the government. Hell, they're going to go after the entire state and somehow, in less than three decades, become one of, if not the most powerful gang in all of Latin America. Branching out from the jail cells to the streets of Sao Paulo to all over the continent and working hand in hand with groups like the Andrangueta, Russian mobsters, and a who's who of global organized crime.

This is the Underworld Podcast. And we're back. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast, where every week we take you inside the stories of global organized crime and everything that goes with it. We are two journalists that have traveled all over the world reporting on crime and conflict and crises and everything like that.

My name is Danny Golds, and with me as always is Sean Williams, who happens to be recording on his cell phone because he's on vacation again and forgot all his equipment, but you know it is what it is. Yeah, we come every week, right? That's what we do. We make shows every week, except for the last, what, like 15 weeks or something? Right, right. So yeah, we got to apologize to everyone. We got all your emails and stuff. We're really sorry we're late on this. We owe you an explanation.

We were working on a deal with a massive entertainment company. I'm not going to name any names, but maybe they should stick to making video game systems. Anyway, they they dicked us around with a really crummy contract for months. And like, look, the thing is, these companies still think it's 2009, right? Or that we're in like magazines or video. And in the podcast world, we don't especially for our podcast, we don't need them.

We make this show ourselves. We can put it on iTunes and Spotify ourselves. All we need them for is promo and selling ads. So we're not going to get on our knees, and we're not going to get nickel and dimed. And it was a very frustrating experience. But luckily, we found a new company to sell ads, and we're still going to be completely creatively independent.

You know, we've been talking, we might have to actually put like the end of two episodes a month on a paywall. We're going to set up the iTunes thing. So you can do it like one, one touch button, patreon.com slash the end world podcast. We've got bonus episodes up there already. Hopefully it won't, it won't come to that, but support independent media, you know, help us out. Yeah. And Sean, anything, anything else?

I mean, no, I mean, apart from me being on 40th holiday of the year and a couple of your old colleagues swooping in last second for a shot of the Dick of the Year Award as well. That was a turn up today. Yeah, guys, we're not going to help you out for free, especially if I used to work for you and your company's all like, we're not going to help you out for free. Don't ask us to rip off our stuff and do all the work for you. Don't do that. Yeah.

If you're not going to pay us, yeah, come on. Anyway, there's a couple of people right now who owe us money from some of the other stuff. And I just, like, I am feeling particularly deranged. Like we're doing things politely at the moment, but like I'm losing my mind and like, we will do an episode on you. Oh no, seriously. Yeah. We find information for a living. I'm way worse people than you. Like, and not just me, like my friends are the ones who find the shell companies, the shell companies, the shell companies for the worst people on earth. Like we, I won't stop.

Like I'm losing my mind. Pay us the money you owe us. Sean, you might have to make an episode about me if we don't get paid. Yeah, I mean, I'm laughing, but this has been absolutely infuriating. And I'm all for it. I might, you know, I think we could all...

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Bonus stuff up on the Patreon for a couple of dollars a month at patreon.com slash the underworld podcast website underworldpod.com for merch and all that other fun stuff. Hope the summer was good for all of you. You know, we took a break and we're just we're ready to go right now, man. Sean, tell us an interesting anecdote. Oh, Christ. All right. I'm about spontaneous as a German arms shipment. So.

I, I, anecdote. I was at this French woman's house in Toulouse once. I had eaten way too much cheese and drunk way too much boxed wine. I woke up in the morning and the sheets were complete. What? Oh. Oh, you mean, oh, you mean something like cool and journalistic. Yeah, shit. Okay, so I guess I'm heading out to Kathmandu tomorrow. And this time in about 24 hours, I'm going to be getting a three-hour massage somewhere. So is that an anecdote or is that kind of more of a brag? These are just both. These are both bad. Oh.

Oh, okay. Well, I mean, that was a pretty magic intro anyway. Is that based on the Langevisha story, the William Langevisha one from a while back? Yeah, I use that a lot, actually. That's one of the best articles I think I've written on a gang. That's the Vanity Fair article. So good. There was also a, I mean, the reason I wanted to do the PCC, you know, we did the Red Command, which is the earliest Brazilian gang way, maybe 30 or 40 episodes back.

But HBO Max just put up this amazing Brazilian documentary. It's a four-part series about the PCC. So I use a lot of that as the source here. How do you say the guy's name? You're in Berlin. Yeah, I don't know. He's American, right? So it's Langevita, but I don't know if that's how he pronounces it. I just read his book, actually, The Atomic Bazaar, and it's incredible. He's such a great journalist. Yeah, amazing reporter. So I use a lot of that article and this documentary. And then, of course, Inside Crime. You know, those guys always have...

great stuff and we use a lot of their stuff as our sources for this. So yeah, PCC, First Command of the Capitol, the massive Brazilian super gang that is taking the international drug trafficking world by storm. Go back if you want more of an overview of Brazil and the gang system to our Red Commando episode, which is maybe like 40 or 50 back. I think it was one of the first 20 we did.

Those guys, they're based out of Rio, and they're actually warring with the PCC right now after they had a truce for a long time. That episode, we go a bit deeper into the history of Brazil and the politics, what happened in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but we're kind of going to gloss over that a little bit in this one because there's just so much to get through with this gang right now. Brazil...

for those who don't know, has by far the most murders of any country in the world right now, not per capita, but just the most, especially the cities. It's insane there. It also has the world's third largest prison system, and it's grown like crazy the last 30 years. In 1990, one out of every 1,600 Brazilians was in jail, and in 2019, that number was one in every 292, which is not good, not doing well.

Of course, I think the top two are the U.S. and China, although the U.S.'s population, I think, has been going down steadily the last decade or two, but I'm not 100% on that. I should definitely...

I've cleared that up. Anyway, Sao Paulo is a state and the city in the state. It's a booming megacity, 20 million people, one of the biggest cities in the world, and one of the top 20 economic powerhouse cities in the world. It's got a big stock exchange, banking, auto industry, textile, pharma, all that. It's Brazil's wealthiest city, 3,000 square miles, skyscrapers right next to favelas, all next to each other.

you know, all pushed in together. And it's got a horrifically broken justice system, terrible police brutality, endemic corruption, income inequality, and really just separate societies in a way, but also very attractive people. Silver lining. I mean, it must be a contender for the least well-covered major city in the world, right? I feel like I barely know anyone who's been there. Have you? I have a couple of friends that I've reported in, that are reporters in Brazil right now. My buddy, Andy,

who works for one of the major financial newspapers. He was in Venezuela for a while, but he's based there now. So he was in town a little while ago. He's an amazing guy. He kind of looks like he's got a real Dennis the Menace thing going on. You know, like he just looks like a howdy doody ass dude. But this dude was like in the streets of Venezuela forever and now is in Brazil. And he's just like a badass dude who looks like he should be, you know,

causing mischief, like stealing pies from windowsills. Game on the show. Sounds amazing. Yeah, I should interview him. He's he I mean, he was in Venezuela for years and he got like respect from people I know that have reported there that yeah, I mean, Venezuela too, when you're reporting there, like people get robbed. There's a there's an American network that I won't name that I'm familiar with that, you know, contacted a bunch of my friends who report a lot in Venezuela to ask their advice and stuff. And they were like, don't do this. And of course, they went and did that.

and they got robbed almost right away for six figures worth of camera equipment. It's no joke. Anyway, so Andy survived all that. He's over there. But yeah, there's just a dearth of, I think, good reporting that makes it, not that there are a dearth of good reporters there, but we don't see a lot for a major population center like Brazil. I feel like I don't.

Then again, I'm one of those people, like I hate when people complain that mainstream media doesn't cover something. They're not looking for it. Yeah, it's a country I definitely wish I knew more about. In the article that Langsworth writes, which is one of the best Longform Magazine articles I've ever seen on a gang, he talks about the genesis of the PCC and how that prison massacre I mentioned early on plays such a big role. Sao Paulo was this booming city, huge economic powerhouse, but

But you had this extremely high levels of inequality. The rich were isolated in their neighborhoods, you know, with armed guards and all that. And the poor who were building up these shanty towns, the favelas, they were left to their own devices. And crime just grows out of control. There's a sense of lawlessness. This is in the 70s and 80s. So the state cracks down with this notoriously corrupt police force going out harsh sentences.

Naturally, the prisons overcrowd after this and become these horrific, brutal places where rape is common, intravenous drug use, torture, isolation, STDs like hepatitis and AIDS are just endemic. The prison guards, they're just brutal too. That's the system where the PCC starts getting going.

And you know, the only prisons and jail cells I've really spent time in as a reporter are in the US or in El Salvador where things can get similar. Though I actually don't think they're nearly as bad as Brazil's from what I've read.

But you kind of see how things are run in a system like that, how people have to live there. You know, I've been where you have those photos of the MS-13 guys where they're all crowded in together. The Bartolos, I think was the, I might be mispronouncing that word, which are the holding cells first where they're really crowded. But the jails themselves, you know, those infamous photos of people packed in, like I've seen that and it's ugly. And you can see why some prisoners would certainly crave

some sort of system, something to keep things organized, which the PCC ends up representing. Yeah, I've seen that kind of thing in Manila. Actually, there's this famous huge prison there that's just grim, disgusting. People like having to lie on top of each other, pretty much being swept up in the drug war. I haven't done anything like that in a while. I was in Zurich in a prison earlier this year. That is exactly as organized as you'd expect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So we have this brutal prison system there where the state really isn't in control and this new gang forms. But obviously it's prison, so there's other gangs there as well. But these PCC guys, they go right to work. They kill some of the other toughest prisoners in Tabate and they start expanding.

They later really take on some of the revolutionary rhetoric of the Red Command, who we did that episode on that I keep mentioning. But they were sort of different from your typical prison gang. They had loftier ideals, kind of from the start. They were big on preaching against the injustice of the state, of the police, and especially of the prison system. Peace, justice, freedom, and equality was their thing.

They launched this 16-point code of conduct, these statutes, that they have to abide by their rules. It says things like Article 13, they have to remain united to prevent a massacre from happening again. Article 14, priorities to pressure the state governor to ease jail restrictions. And it has other rules too about drug use, about snitching, about disallowing rape in the prisons, which had been a huge problem. And they go really, really hard on the brotherhood and discipline.

A lot of the experts I read will tell you the brotherhood thing and the discipline, their codes and sticking with it are really what make the difference. I mean, they're aggressively violent and murderous, actually kind of barbaric when it comes down to it, and they dole out that violence according to their system, but they really have this whole thing. It kind of feels to me like a combination almost of what you see with street gangs and the mafia, like a mixture of those two coming together. Says a Brazilian official on HBO.com,

Everything there is resolved with a death penalty, right? Maybe that's why the organization works so well, because there is no middle ground. If you don't do what they want, you die. That sounds like a rule of law we can all aspire to.

Yeah, but it also, I mean, you'll see as it goes on, right? Their whole thing is that like they're not, they dole that out, but they slow down the other sort of more anarchic murders that were going on. So it's kind of like a weird tit for tat thing. And they call their other members brothers. Each actually has to pay a fee to belong, right? But in the beginning, money and money making isn't really a focus. The leaders, they're not trying to live like opulent, gaudy cartel bosses, right?

They also have like, you know, ceremonial stuff, which, you know, everyone likes a bit of ceremony, though. It seems like they really played into mystique a little more than your average gang jump in. They call it the circle of blood ceremony. And when you get in, they call it getting baptized. So like, I'm generally a skeptic of the whole revolutionary erratic thing when it comes to groups like this.

But this struck me as one of those criminal organizations. It sort of masquerades a little bit as a revolutionary movement or did at first. And then it kind of grew into it a little bit. And you'll see why. But it's kind of the opposite of that leader in the 18th Street Gang I talked about in the El Salvador episode that I interviewed Santiago, who, you know, he was this guy who was a big player in the 18th Street Gang. He's actually he's in the documentary that I made for Vice.

who now is trying to claim that 18th Street and the gangs are like the voice of the poor, even though the poor are the people they terrorize. You know, I don't doubt, obviously, that these gangs, they're definitely a growth, a reflection of the existence of this injustice and brutality. But 18th Street, like, you know, they have no loftier ideals, right? They have no, they can't really claim to have this rhetoric because they haven't abided by it all. The PCC is going to have a bit more of like a,

you know, a bit more of what they're doing. And you'll see that and you'll hear that. Here's the Vanity Fair article again, breaking it down along with their expansion. Quote, though it was ruthless, it was also judicious and cool. It murdered spectacularly, but only in calculation of need. What it had that the competing factions lacked was discipline.

The discipline was based on a moral code that enhanced the existing prison rules and included an insistence on better living conditions and prisoners' rights. The PCC was a criminal gang, but also a political force, albeit an absurdly self-righteous one. Prisoners were attracted to the group because it brought order to their lives and gave them purpose, protection, and power. There were obligations. PCC followers lived by its laws under penalty of death.

Those who formally joined became brothers for life. They were initiated with a baptism involving water and had to sign a 16-point manifesto that still serves as the PCC's constitution. The 16-point was a declaration of the group's intent. It stated, no one can stop our struggle because the seat of the command has spread throughout the prison system of the state, and we are also succeeding in establishing ourselves on the outside.

We will revolutionize the country from inside the prisons, and our strong arm will be the terror of the powerful. And they've got the gift of the gab, for sure. It's like they're telling young men exactly what they want to hear, right? You can see why it's so appealing. Like, you're not alone. We've got your back. You've got a team to bat for. But also, you know, your violence is okay. It's righteous. It's good. It sounds a bit like toxic masculinity, if you ask me. Someone needs to have a word with these guys.

You should go to Brazil and give that a shot and see how it works out for you. The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure.

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So, you know, they even have a little bit of, like I said, the real Sicilian mafia thing going, the blood oaths, the ceremony, and this baptism. And of course, the state and prison officials, they're really slow to catch on to what's going on. And then when they see the gang expanding, they do the head in the sand thing, pretend it doesn't exist.

They move some of the leadership around to other prisons where they're not heavy, expecting them to die out. But of course, you know, instead they just expand. And I feel like that's such a common trope, right? This method of getting rid of prison gangs is to send some of these leadership guys around, but it always seems like it backfires. It always just makes the gangs grow more.

At one point in 1995, Big Jelly and Little Caesar, they're shipped to other state prisons after a fight with another gang. And of course, they keep spreading the word of the PCC to those states. They start riots, and then the authorities get fed up with them and just ship them home. And the spread of it, the speed, is really something. Remember, it's not like other prison gangs didn't exist. But this whole brotherhood thing, the discipline, the ceremony, the brutality, all of it combines into this tornado. Here's Inside Crime, quote,

Once the Sao Paulo jails were under the command, the PCC sought to create more order. It organized where people slept. It designated leaders of the cell blocks who assigned people to clean the cells, among other duties. It began to resolve disputes between cellmates, ending fights over provisions, accusations of theft, petty jealousies, disruptive behavior, and drug abuse, especially of crack cocaine, which was eventually prohibited in PCC-controlled prisons.

I just, I keep thinking of Goodfellas, you know, where they call Polly basically the police for guys who couldn't go to the police. That's what none of the cops understood, right? That's the simplest way of describing a major attribute of organized crime, right? Organized. And the ones at the top, the adjudicators, whatever you want to call it, they hold the power. Yeah, man. It's just like Sam Taylor posts from Pat's Boss. Or Daddy Pig, you know? Like, the man's the man in the end. Yeah.

A big thing that happens too in the mid to late 90s is that cell phones appear on the scene.

The PCC is already taking over the jails all over Sao Paulo, right? But the cell phones allow them to communicate with the outside and the streets. And of course, sort of like, you know, the way the Mexican mafia is in West Coast prisons, right? If you control the prisons, eventually you're going to control the streets too, because your people are going to be cycling in and out, especially in Brazil, where people even escape prison all the time or let go. And especially when the state is dominated by such a large, vicious prison system, like right in the biggest city.

And also all the criminals know they'll eventually be in prison where the gang is in control. So they can't really fuck about with them. Anyway, the cell phone allows for organization, communication, all that. The leaderships, I mean, they start having conference calls like every morning in the various prisons and all that and with people on the outside. Quote, they allow the PCC to transcend the pettiness of location, to rise even above prison walls and to operate without restraint in ethereal world of communication.

The group began to reshape itself away from the original pyramid design and toward a structure of semi-autonomous cells, which was so fluid and complex that it could not be pinned down. And that's, again, from the Vanity Fair language tweet article that I've been quoting. This is starting to sound more like they're building the organization structure of a terror group than a gang, really.

Right. And this was written, I think, this article in the late 2000s. And he brings that up, how that organization kind of fits in with a terror group in a way. You know, that was late 2000s. Obviously, the focus was on Al-Qaeda and stuff like that. And he definitely makes that comparison in the article. In 1999, the PCC commits the largest bank robbery in Brazilian history for 32 million Brazilian reals.

That's actually something I found pretty interesting too. Bank robbing was such a big thing in Brazil, especially in that time in Sao Paulo back then. And the bank robbers were kind of these like, you know, romanticized characters there. They had a mystique and like a coolness to them. And you'll see that when we introduce the notorious Mercola. They also, they're taking over all the drug spots in the favelas as well in Sao Paulo, handling all the retail sales after having taken over the prison sales.

And of course, you know, there's gang wars and shootouts in the streets that are pretty vicious as they're trying to claim the territory from the gangs on the outside. Same thing like when they're taking over the prisons. But once they take over, right, things calm down because they're this dominant group. Think the Sinaloa cartel back like a decade ago.

Basically, they have a competing monopoly on violence with the state. And if you want to commit a murder, you're going to need to get there okay. Yeah, we've seen this in shows on the Yakuza, Albanian Mafia, even the Taliban's similar kind of rule of thumb. Right, they're in charge. Here's The Economist in 2022. Quote, since 1999, Sao Paulo's homicide rate has plunged by 80%.

It has gone from being one of the most dangerous places in Brazil to one of the safest. Although police take credit for the decline, academics point out that the biggest falls occur in the most violent suburbs at around the time that the PCC began to make its presence felt in such places. To end the gang wars in the 1990s, the group created its own parallel court system in which to settle disputes, says Mr. Feltrown.

It mediated among gang members' families, churches, and other members of civil society.

But yeah, back to 1999, 2000, big gelling little Caesar, the two leaders that we know about have been shifted around and isolated. Another leader with their permission rises up in their place, a guy they call Sombra. Sombra is basically running things in 2001 when all hell breaks loose and the PCC have their coming out party. What's it called in like high society when they announce someone's entrance like into emergence on the scene, like those parties? Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about? Oh, God. I think we used to call it getting hammered down the working men's club. But yeah, I'm pretty glad that neither of us knows this. It's like a Southern society thing, like one of those debutant ball or something like that. I don't know, man. Anyway.

No. Whatever. It's that. So they have that. According to this PCC member named Macaro, who is like a former high, high level member of the group who actually does a lengthy interview for the HBO doc I mentioned, 40 prisoners, 40 PCC prisoners, they're being transferred to an infamous prison known for torture. And 25 of them, they make this agreement that they're going to cause a massive riot.

And because of the cell phones everywhere and the leadership spread out, they're able to coordinate what's likely the biggest prison riot the world has ever seen. On February 18th, 2001, 29 jail units across the state rise up. It's visiting day, so they're also able to take 5,000 hostages, including dozens of employees. Some of them tie grenades around the necks of the employees.

The police, they end up entering with troops. 15 detainees are killed. The hostages are released. Macaro says the PCC actually kind of loses out on this one, but afterward, no one can really doubt that they're there and that they have this power.

Only a few months later, Sombra is actually killed in prison in a power struggle between the leadership. The PCC makes the prison system mourn for seven days, even though by most accounts, they put him and his partner to death for growing too greedy and extorting other prisoners. And a civil war kind of emerges among the leadership about how the structure of the top should work, how the gang should operate. And this is when Marcola, who they call the playboy, emerges.

Marcola, he's this pickpocket, then he becomes an armed robber, kidnapper, that sort of thing. He's not a tried and true killer at the time, and Inside Crime has this breakdown of his bio. They say that he was born to a Bolivian father and Brazilian mother in 1968. He was an orphan at nine living on the streets and kind of surviving by his wits, and his nickname comes partially from the slang term for a type of glue he sniffed as a kid.

He's arrested for the first time for real in 1986 for a bank robbery. Does a number of other robberies, escapes from jail a few times, sets up shop in Paraguay, you know, plans and executes these big bank robberies in Brazil. And he gets the nickname Playboy because he was kind of big on fancy cars, nice watches. He dressed well. He was like a really smooth, slick operator, smart guy. He's actually caught in a fancy car in 1999 after having escaped from prison. And he's been incarcerated ever since then.

He's one of those guys, you know, the type that

They always talk about these prison leaders who study Machiavelli and Sun Tzu and read all that stuff. So he's got that whole thing going for him, which is, I feel like, almost a common trope when it comes to gang leaders for prison gangs and all that. You know, you always hear that. The guy read Sun Tzu, he's Machiavelli, all that. Sun Tzu is like 15 pages long, man. Yeah. It's not great. I read it. You know, I didn't get that much out of it, but maybe it's different when you're in prison. Two stars. Not great. Not great.

He's still said to be the head of the PCC right now, you know, 20-something years later, which is incredible. And according to Langsworth, he's actually in Tabate when the PCC is formed as the soccer team. He's playing with a different team, and he kind of watches the gang from afar, watches it grow bigger while still kind of playing the fringes. He's said to have been a childhood friend of Little Caesars, and he didn't join the PCC until 1998.

He rises up the ranks really quickly. And there's this internal battling about who's going to have control. He wanted to make the group more egalitarian. Little Caesar and Big Jelly kind of wanted too much power. And at some point, the PCC leaders, actually, the rival ones, they have his wife killed. And the assassin screams when he's doing it, this is for traitors.

It also gets revealed during the Civil War that both Big Jelly and Little Caesar have been rapists, which is like a big no-no in the PCC world, which is part of the reason they eventually end up getting kicked out.

And in 2002, during this power struggle that's been ongoing, Mercola puts a bounty on the heads of Big Jelly Little Caesar, the original leaders, and forces them out, effectively taking over. Wait, is this entire episode just the founding myth of Little Caesar's restaurants? Have I missed something? Dude, I, you know, I've never had their pizza. I think I had it once, but I'm not, if I'm going to go with like shitty fast food pizza, I'm going to go Domino's or Papa John's. Like I don't, no Pizza Hut or Little Caesar's.

Yeah, I mean, they've hidden the rapist part pretty well in the adverts as well. I don't think we can. I don't think we can. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly Little Caesars is not run by sexual abusers. Yeah. Don't, you know, they get, they get, they're loose with the lawsuits in this country. Watch it. Watch it.

So Marcola, he does this thing that's really smart where he says, I don't really want to be the central boss. Let's have a leadership of seven or eight people, like a council with a dozen or so alternates, and then 50 to 100 regional leaders where, you know, we'll vote on things. And he essentially, he gives up total power. And for this, he's revered even more. They call him the godfather.

And he really helps bring the PCC to another level, like a serious level of organization. He's a shrewd businessman type, says the Financial Times, quote, central to the professionalization of the PCC was the expansion of their system of syntonias, or organizational divisions, responsible for a specific area. There were three basic syntonias to begin with, drug trafficking, internal discipline, and support for arrested members.

Over time, the structure expanded to include its sintonias for legal support and countenance and female members. That's really when they go for the whole peace, justice, freedom, and equality thing. The rhetoric really increases. Another thing that he helps put in place, you know, the lower ranking members, they've been getting kind of abused, right? Not treated good. They're doing crimes on the outside. They're getting arrested. They're not getting any support, no money for the families, no pay lawyers. So he helps change things, right? The social aspect of the gang, right?

That kicks into high gear. They start taking care of the families and their members. They get them pay lawyers. And they're also getting bolder at this time. He wasn't big on sentence violence, but he was big on violence in general. I like that. That's a great sentence.

And they start going after the outside. You know, they're planting bombs around the stock exchange and other high profile locations. In March of 2003, they kill a hardline judge who had overseen some of the prisons and had gone after the gangs. And they lose a lot of their privileges in prison. And after he dies, this judge, after he was killed, it's like a huge turning point. It's real war with the state now.

Things get way harsher on the prisoners. Meanwhile, outside the PCC is just expanding like crazy. But murders, like I said before, they're kind of dropping just like they did in prison. And then we have May 2006. And this is like nothing else Brazil has ever seen. And really like nothing I've seen from a criminal group in a long time.

It's almost like the PCC becomes this combination of the cartels, gangs like MS-13 and FARC kind of as well. You know, the militant Colombian rebel group turned cocaine traffickers. I'm just thinking, like, we've recorded two shows this week, by the way, guys. And let's just say that my one, which I think we're going to put out after this, doesn't quite have the same tone to it. We've got a bit of a mix.

Yeah, but it's, I mean, there's Japanese schoolgirls involved. So I'm sure you sickos will enjoy that either way. What's really interesting, and I found this in a paper written by the Brazilian journalist Leonardo Coutinho. Well, I haven't seen it anywhere else. And it kind of has that aura of like urban legend, mythical lore stuff you see with gang formations and prison stuff that almost feels like too much like a movie. But this journalist, like he's very legit.

In 2002, a notorious Chilean terrorist by the name of Mauricio Hernandez Norambuena is arrested in Brazil. He's the mastermind behind the Chilean terrorist group called Patriotic Front Manuel Rodriguez. They had done kidnappings of like prominent business executives, bombings, guerrilla warfare, everything you'd expect from like a South American guerrilla group.

He's a left-wing militant familiar with terrorist and insurgent actions. And he ends up in a cell with Marcola and becomes a student of him. And he teaches Marcola about urban warfare, guerrilla tactics, and politics. Again, it strikes me as something that seems like too good to be true. You know, like too much of a narrative point that's insane. But this guy's reporting, like this is a prominent journalist, and he wrote a paper called The Evolution of the PCC. So if anyone's going to know, it's going to be him.

Now, the PCC having insane prison riots, right, and being brutally violent, it's not new. Here's just a little quote from the Vanity Fair article again. The PCC brought order to the prisons and slums, but showed itself to be lower than animalistic. It perfected a form of murder by which those whom it condemned to die were forced through threat of torture to commit suicide. In 2005, during a two-day riot that gutted a prison in a town called Vencesla, I'm

Just butchering these names. It's like German. I don't even know. It invaded a protective custody section, decapitated five of its enemies, mounted the heads on poles to wait before TV cameras, and it is alleged, then placed one on the ground for a game of PCC soccer. So yeah, decapitation is actually... Cutting off heads becomes like a pretty standard move of theirs.

But anyway, 2006 and things are about to reach a whole new level. Are you sure you want to stick by that violence quote now? This seems pretty senseless, some of this. I don't know, man. Early May, the government orders the transfer of over 700 prisoners and they're going to be sent to a newly rebuilt, tightly run prison. According to New York Times, this is a plan to thwart some upcoming act of rebellion moving these prisoners. But it's happening. It's going to mess up Mother's Day, which is like a sacred day for the prisoners.

Other motives about what happens, they've been bandied about for why it's something about like 60 flat screen TVs to watch the World Cup that disappear. And another is that corrupt cops kidnap Mercola's stepson.

Whatever the case, on May 12th, 2006, the PCC goes to full-on war with the state of Sao Paulo. And not just rioting in the jails. They burn dozens of buses on the outside, which we've talked about is popular. They do that in Salvador too, a way of paralyzing the state. They attack police stations with automatic rifles and bombs. They kill police officers in their homes and in public. Something like 40 law enforcement officers are killed in the coming days.

And this goes on for days. By the time it's Mother's Day, the third day of the rebellion, the whole city of 20 million people is shut down. Business, schools, everything. Downtown is empty. And it's this unprecedented display of power. It's one thing to ride in the jails, right? It's another to take over cities and kill cops in their stations.

Rumors spread that Marcola has been killed. Things keep going haywire. A lawyer for the PCC proposes an idea to end it, which is getting a statement from Marcola to prove he's alive after visiting him in this maximum security jail cell. But he refuses to talk, but he does allow the lawyer to say that he's alive. And the next day, just like that, the attacks stop. No demands are actually made by the PCC

Which is kind of the confusing thing, right? It's just a show of power. And rumors of a deal being struck between the state and Marcola, they spread everywhere. The next thing, though, the police go completely out of control. It ends up being called the Crimes of May. And there, they just go on a rampage in the favelas, executing any young man they think was involved with the PCC. By the end of the month, over 500 people have been killed this way.

That's an insanely high body count. I might be sounding a bit stupid, but Favela is just like a Portuguese name for a slum then, right? Because I've heard stuff about Rio's favelas and the cops going in and just completely decimating people. But yeah, I didn't know it was across the whole of Brazil. Yeah, it's just the name for the slums. I hope. I could be very wrong on that. In which case, we won't go back and have this out. It would just keep me looking like a fool. No, not at all.

Says Langsworth, quote, what is certain is that the assault was a demonstration of strength, an act of self-affirmation, and a measured blow against the rule of law. Some of the attacks were so brazen as to be nearly suicidal. The point being made was not that they could be carried out, but that they could be sustained. The lack of serious demands added a vicious twist. It denied the government the power even to concede and allowed the PCC to script the drama from beginning to end.

Moreover, because the PCC leaders were already in prison, they had little to fear of punishment. They could taunt the state from within the very walls it had built to contain them. Honestly, that article, like it's just so well written too. I think it's the most I've ever quoted from something in an episode. I love him. I really, if he's listening, which I'm sure he is, get on the show, please.

For the next few months, the PCC launches a bunch of minor attacks here and there, you know, on police, on buses, a couple of prison riots, you know, run of the mill. In August, they kidnap a reporter and force his station to air a DVD video of their statements. Apparently they had tried to deliver it to media outlets, but were just kind of ignored, which, like, note to criminal groups listening right now, you don't have to kidnap anyone. Just come on the podcast, you know, we'll chop it up. We'll come to you.

You know, we're, we've had a couple of situations like that. One was unfortunately, what I'll tell the story of one day that was unfortunately ruined by the Mexican federalities. But yeah, nothing you can do about that. Couldn't even get a refund on those airline tickets. But you know, you know what they say, the best laid plans of mice and men are often ruined by Mexican federal tax, tax forces.

What can you do? Anyway, what follows is a harsh crackdown, but the PCC just keeps expanding and really starts taking care of its low-level members, both financially and with lawyers, and they start calling it the Harmony of Ties, which is, you know, a sweet name. They bring lawyers into the gang even. McCarroll actually helped set this up. They even pay for members of the organization to study law, those who don't have charges holding them back. It's very, you know, departed.

Yeah, I mean, you know, lawyers are gangsters as we found out recently. Oh my God. Yeah. Christ. But yeah, it's like our old school, what was the first couple episodes or first episode

20, it was all about just like getting to real estate. Cause all, all, all retired, all guys who want to leave the crime life, their, their, their plans to get into real estate, but just skip the crime life and get into real estate in the first place. Or maybe just, if you don't want to do that, just pass the bar. Yeah. And then you're good. Yeah. Don't even get involved with, with organized crime. Just,

do legal crime by being a lawyer or a real estate guy. - Yeah, make sure your clients are just like idiot journalists or anyone else that might come across your path. - So they start focusing more now on making money. PCC drug trafficking becomes a big business.

Different factions deal with different aspects, but it really grows from this kind of run-of-the-mill jail gang into this massively powerful organized crime faction with power in the halls of the state, cartel-like drug trafficking in the span of 20 years. It's remarkable.

And of course, what do we have right next to Sao Paulo City? A major, major port city. Puerto Santos is the second largest port in Latin America. And if you control the prisons, if you control the streets, what's next? Why not take over the second largest port in Latin America that happens to be right next door to your stronghold and is also like right next door to the major cocaine producing regions in the area? You know, you don't really have to be a genius to see what happens next.

In 2014, according to the Financial Times, Mercola helps create the general centonia for states and nations to focus on national and international expansion. He also gets the PCC really linked up with his network of lawyers, using them as carrier pigeons, basically. And two dozen of them actually get arrested in Operation 2016. That's how tied in they were to the gang.

According to Coutinho, they've also linked up with former FAR guerrillas for training and establishing links with powerful Lebanese Hezbollah-affiliated money launderers. They're also establishing ties with the Calabrian and Jongeta, arguably, or a lot of people say, one of the most powerful crime groups in the world, to move massive amounts of cocaine in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

The PCC decides to focus on the European market, which has always been second, you know, for the Colombians and the Mexicans. And there's already a ton of international groups that are operating in that port for that reason. So they kind of, you know, get right into those networks as well.

And this is from an OCCRP report, as re-quoted by Inside Crime. The Andrangheta long allowed cocaine-leaving Santos to enter Europe through ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp, and afterwards be distributed to Russian, Balkan, and Moroccan groups. The Andrangheta also helped establish drug deals between the PCC and criminal groups in West Africa, which kept a part of the cocaine, in exchange for helping to transport larger loads onto Europe, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Yeah, I mean, why have Colombian cartels managed to corner the regional coke market and not the Brazilians? Do you think...

It's like a massive country. It's got all the right environmental factors. These insane kind of bloodthirsty gangs. You think they'd be warring all out with the FARC and other Colombian guys in the rainforest and stuff? I don't know. What do you mean regional? Well, I mean, they are. That's the thing. They've expanded now where they're taking over a lot of trafficking routes in South America. I don't know if they've expanded into...

Columbia proper, but they're fighting in the Amazon over all these routes and they're trying to take over and move in. But I think, I don't know if they're fighting directly with the Colombian cartels or trying to work in conjunction with them. Sounds like it could go wrong pretty quickly. They're expanding like crazy and taking over from the traditional traffickers that were operating there before.

Also in 2016, they take out this guy named Jorge Rafat, who was the border king in Paraguay and had worked with them before, or more so taxed them for moving through his territory. This guy, he knew everyone. Everyone knew him. He's a businessman, like a major political donor, all that sort of stuff. And the PCC wants to cut him out because he's a middleman.

It's a pretty diabolical operation to kill him because he wasn't exactly a soft target. And they hit him just commando style with like 50 cows fired at his car, something out of a heist film or a heap. It's really tactical. And over the next few weeks after they hit him, dozens of his associates are killed too. And now the PCC controls that area of the border. And they're getting huge in Paraguay. They're showing up in Paraguayan jails, right? And there's a native Paraguayan gang that they're fighting, which is called the Rotella Clan.

But they just come in brutal. Paraguay is not used to it. They're slitting throats. They're hanging people upside down after that. They take over Paraguay in prison. They behead people. There's videos of them holding their heads up. Just real savage stuff. Yeah, and speaking personally, I can definitely say do not go looking for those videos. It's not nice and kind of ruined my lunch.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why you, I, I, I don't need to see that stuff anymore, but, uh, good for you for, for doing research for this episode. That was completely unnecessary. Yes. Audio. I did an audio. We're doing, we're, we're doing audio. We,

We don't need to. Should we put those up on the Patreon? I feel like that's the kind of thing that doesn't, that might get us banned. Me and Danny had a conversation with some people in New York and they were like, you guys need lawyers actually for the show. And we were like, no, maybe not. But given that I've just said Little Caesars run by pedophiles and now. You didn't say that. Stop, stop. Enough. Enough.

Paraguay is important because cocaine comes through there first, right? There's an established route from Peru and Bolivia where a lot of it's grown and manufactured.

In 2017, the PCC, they organized a massive bank robbery there too, robbing $8 million from a security company. And there's also just a ton of insanely violent prison fights going on in facilities in these Amazon states of Brazil, Manaus, which again, I'm probably mispronouncing. Manaus. At the PCC, say it again. Manaus, I think that's the one that's like a massive big state in the middle of the Amazon. It's really weird. Right, right. And that's a big, that's a big like way station for cocaine trafficking.

So the PCC really wants to move in there. They're taking on a cartel called the Family of the North that originally controlled the routes there. It's a major, like major transshipment point. And it's right smack in the middle of the continent where the cocaine just flows like crazy. And it's kind of lawless. In the first two weeks of 2017, 130 prisoners are killed in this fighting.

And it's actually the family in the North fighting the PCC. And the family had teamed up with the Red Command, which had had a 20-year truce with the PCC that ends in 2016 when the PCC alleged that the Red Command were licking up with their enemies. So they had serious clashes too between those two groups, the main gangs in Brazil, the PCC and the Red Command that started in 2016. And just like dozens dead and some beheadings because also the PCC wants to try to make inroads in Rio where the Red Command run things.

The guy that sets everything up in Paraguay and with the international expanse and with the drug trafficking and all that is this guy named Fumino who came up with Marcola robbing banks and went on to become a massive drug trafficker and something like his right-hand man despite not really officially being in the gang until much later when he starts working with the PCC.

So he knows the groups in Europe and Africa. He's like a character out of a movie, right? Out of Zero Zero. He communicates with them to ship over the cocaine. Marcola himself actually connects to the Andrangheta too. And high-ranking members of the group...

They've been arrested in Brazil in recent years, including Rocco Morabitu, said to be the co-king king of the Italian mafia, which is like a great superlative. But also, I just want to be clear, I don't know if all our listeners know that, Andrangheta is not the mafia, right? The mafia is Sicilian, Andrangheta is Calabrian. That's like, you know, a little up from Sicily. But they've really grown in power the last decade. They're a phenomenally powerful international group that operates viciously. But anyway, according to Financial Times,

PCC buys Coca-Paste for 1,000 euros per kilo. They can then use that to make two or three kilos of cocaine, which sells for 35,000 euros a kilo in Europe. So that's a healthy profit margin. That's like crypto profit margin for like the one month when crypto was doing really well. You know, that's a solid way to make money, even with all the shipping and protection that needs to go into it. Yeah, man.

But in 2018, of course, there's internal issues again. Two of the highest guys out there in the PCC that are free and right beneath Marcola, they're said to be stealing from the gang and kind of throwing their weight around a bit too much. So Firmino actually has them taken out and he pretty much just takes over and becomes the top free PCC man. Okay, so a little recap. So Marcola is in prison conducting all these attacks and beheadings and other things the PCC does.

The PCC is in a war with this group called the Family of North and the Red Command in Brazil. And then Marcola's right-hand man is Firmino, and he's working with the Andrangheta to ship Amazonian Coke into the European market.

I mean, all right, a couple of things that are all right, right? I don't think Marco is ordering all these things, right? These groups operate semi-autonomously in a way. You know, he's not like overseeing everything, right? This is a gigantic group. But yeah, he's the leader. He's in prison. Firmino is kind of taken over on the outside. They are fighting with the family of North and the Red Command, beheadings, all that. It's not Amazonian coke. The coke goes through the Amazon.

But I think it's not grown in the Amazon, right? I think it's grown. I mean, it's grown in Peru and Bolivia. I think it's more highlands than Amazon, right? Isn't that better for growing cocaine? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a botanist, but that's my general impression. But yeah, we clear? Is everything? Oh, yeah. I am. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good.

Anyway, Firmino, soon he's actually arrested in Mozambique, but actually it almost doesn't matter, right? The PCC is just growing and growing with some speculating that they are the biggest group operating in Latin America right now, which is insane to see them bigger than the cartels.

They're investing in legitimate companies. They're starting their own companies. They own gas stations, livestock, transportation stuff. They're in illegal gold mining. They're in cybercrime. They've just gotten so much bigger. But the streets are actually starting to grow a little wilder too. There's starting to be a lack of discipline and the command doesn't have the same level of control that it did back in the early days when it was a more tight-knit group.

And here's the Financial Times in February of 2022 after mentioning that the PCC has 40,000 members and do half a billion dollars a year in revenue, which kind of sounds like both sound like a low estimate to me.

Quote, along the way, the PCC forged commercial ties with the region's underworld, striking deals with Bolivian farmers to supply cocaine paste and ex-far guerrillas in Colombia to provide training and arms. In the tri-border area between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, it teamed up with Lebanese syndicates, which some Brazilian authorities believe have links to Hezbollah, but launder money according to prosecutors and federal police. That tri-border area, I kind of want to do an episode just on that because that's supposed to be...

I had an opportunity to go there a couple of years ago, but it didn't work out. But that's supposed to be just a wild, wild area.

I've actually seen the 40,000 number for members cited for years, like going back more than a decade. So I feel like it's got to be much higher by now. Actually, yeah, I was in Peru earlier this year just on holiday and this tour guide was telling me all about some Coke stuff there. So I'm going to try and do a show on that at some point. But I mean, Hezbollah, they've come up twice in this show. Tour guide. Tour guide to Machu Picchu, who just knew a hell of a lot. I mean, he's really...

Had a lot of interest and just wanted to talk about cocaine production all the time. I think just really interested in it, like really good historian.

Yeah, tour guide, sure. Yeah, yeah, tour guide. Knows a lot. Yeah, cool guy. Oh, you were saying Hezbollah, something? Well, just they pop up everywhere. I mean, is there anything more global than a Hezbollah money guy? We've seen them in Guinea-Bissau, Brazil, like all over the place, everywhere. Yeah. I mean, there's that famous connection, right? I don't know if it's all Hezbollah for just Lebanese traffickers, but there's a huge Lebanese population. It's a really successful population in West Africa.

And there's always been this trans-shipment route, this cocaine route from South America

to West Africa and then spread out either into Europe or into the Middle East itself. And that's a big, big, well-established trafficking route. That sort of shady West African control there. But yeah, the PCC guys, they're taking over at such an insane rate that in 2021, a big-time drug trafficker who operates on the Brazil-Paraguay border by the name of Fad Jamil Georges

he surrenders to the police after the PCC threatens him. Dude is just like, I mean, this is not a, it's not like you're running the mill citizen, right? This is a major drug traffic in a terrifying area. He's got soldiers, but the dude is so scared of the PCC. Once they make their intentions clear, he just turns himself in. Yeah. I think that, I mean, I'm scared of the PCC. Yeah.

Also in December 2021, just as the U.S. Treasury starts targeting the PCC, sanctioning people involved and calling it one of the most powerful organized crime groups in the world, three big cocaine shipments are discovered on the same day that are coming from the Port of Santos, and they're going to Spain, France, and Ghana. So...

Yeah, somebody in logistics had a really, really bad day. But that is the that's the story of the PCC and their expansion and where they're at right now. Oh, my God, that was insane. And yeah, like crazy hot stay. And our next show, like I said earlier, that is going to be a lot lighter on the beheadings and all that kind of stuff. I can promise.

But yeah, guys, thanks so much for waiting for us. We're sorry it took so long. We wanted to keep going, but we had to make sure that we were getting paid. Because isn't that what... There's one thing you've learned from all these groups, like that is... It's what it comes down to. But patreon.com, that's the normal podcast. We will have interviews and all that other stuff and source lists. And we put the scripts up too, if that's your thing. If you want to read them. And yeah, thanks again for tuning in. ♪