Women Who Ran Crime Rings

The criminal underworld is primarily a male-dominated enterprise, but that doesn’t keep the fairer sex out of it. Women have run crime rings all over the world, dabbling in everything from drugs and prostitution to murder. Check out how these 10 daring women rose to the top of their organizations through brutality, intelligence and female cunning.

The Cocaine Godmother was one of the most fearsome figures of the '80s. Blanco was wicked from a young age, experimenting with kidnapping and murder before she was even in her teens. After marrying Alberto Bravo, she emigrated to the United States where she and her husband would start a very profitable drug smuggling business. Blanco relocated to Miami in the 1970s, developing a network of intensely loyal foot soldiers in each area. After being arrested by the DEA in 1985, she continued to run her mammoth cocaine operation from jail. She was released in 2004 and deported to Bogota, where she lived quietly until being killed in 2012.

Photo via The Prisma

The 21st century has seen some big changes in the way the traditional Italian crime families are run. One of the biggest is the increased presence of women in the ranks. In the old days, ladies were purposely shut out of criminal activities, but as cops crack down harder, syndicates don’t have that luxury anymore. When Naples crimelord Nicola Pianese was gunned down in 2006, his wife Raffaella D’Alterio picked up his business and quickly earned the somewhat less-than-threatening nickname "The Big Female Kitten." D’Alterio was the target of gunmen herself, but she diligently worked to expand her family’s extortion business until a police raid on her house ended her reign in 2012.

An interesting trend in American gangs is the creation of a “ladies wing”—the Bloods were notorious for the Bloodettes, for example. So meet Maria Mejia, who was the head of the “Bad Barbies," the all-female side group to the Bronx’s notorious Trinitarios. The gang boasted as many as 100 members at any given time, and they’ve been accused of at least 9 murders and 24 attempted murders. Making most of their money through drug dealing, they are brutally efficient about protecting their territory. Mejia was arrested in 2012 in connection to a killing.

The Chinese Triads are some of the most feared criminal organizations in the world, with their tendrils stretching all over the globe. Chinese society prides itself on being egalitarian, so it should be no surprise that women can reach lofty positions in the triads. Xie Caiping was the godmother of a criminal group in the enormous city of Chongqing, and her network of gambling dens, human smuggling and drug trafficking made her enormously wealthy. Caiping also kept a harem of young male lovers to satisfy her. She avoided prosecution for years because her brother-in-law was the city’s deputy police chief, but when investigators conducted a huge crackdown on Chongqing’s gangs she couldn’t hide any longer and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

How does a mother of 13 establish herself at the head of a massive drug gang? By working at it. Leon emigrated from Mexico in the 1980s and quickly had 13 children from five different fathers, most of whom were heavy players in the drug trade. Leon was described as the “queen spider” of a brutal northeastern Los Angeles crime ring, operating out of a heavily fortified house on Drew Street and turning the neighborhood into a nightmare of violence and corruption. Her sons served as her enforcers, expanding the business while protecting their mother. In 2008, the LAPD worked with the federal government to raid Leon’s property, and she’s currently in jail.

Photo via LAWeekly

Another female Mafioso who had to take charge of the family business when the top-ranking man got busted, Giusy Vitale’s life was intertwined with crime from a very young age. Growing up in the Palermo region, her father and brothers were Cosa Nostra operatives and Giusy was made to drop out of school at the age of 13 so she could have more time to run messages to and from prison. When her brothers Leonardo and Vito were both arrested in 1998, they turned to Giusy to run the organization while she was in prison. She handled the family business with aplomb, proving her strength as a negotiator, but Giusy wasn’t on the throne for long—the police took her in just a few months later. While in prison, she flipped on her family and testified in exchange for placement in the witness protection program.

Photo via Il Due

Kate Leigh was one of eight children who came into the underworld early, making a career selling alcohol after 6 p.m. But later on, Leigh became one of Sydney’s leading cocaine suppliers in the mid-1920s. Leigh was also involved in a brutal feud with rival female crimelord Tilly Devine, and the two women engaged in a number of vicious brawls over their careers. Leigh raised herself up from poverty to immense wealth, and when she had to appear in court to defend herself, she would wear diamond rings on all 10 fingers just to show off.

Photo via WikiCommons

You might know the Cosa Nostra, but Italy has a wide variety of other Mafias, each with its own specialties. The region of Calabria is home to the 'Ndrangheta, which in the late 1990s became the dominant criminal force in the country. Mafias are, of course, typically male-dominated, but on rare occasions a woman will rise to the top. Maria Serraino was cousin of Paolo Serraino, the big boss in Calabria, and even though her son Emilio was allegedly the man in charge, Maria—who was nicknamed “Grandma Heroin”—was the one who made all the decisions. She expanded the family’s drug business all over southern Italy before being arrested and sentenced to life in 1997.

One of the most depressing things about the American criminal justice system is how easy it is for incarcerated criminals to keep their gangs going. Take the case of Danny Roman. The L.A. gang leader was sentenced to life in prison in 1984 when his daughter Vianna was just 9 years old. From the clink, he became a top-ranked leader in the Mexican Mafia, and appointed Vianna the leader of the Harpys, a vicious Los Angeles street gang. She dominated an area of town north of USC and extorted businesses, dealt drugs and even engaged in armed robbery and murder before the cops cracked her organization in 2012.

The cartel wars in Mexico are rough on everybody, civilians and soldiers alike. In recent years, it’s become more and more common for women to get their hands dirty, and nobody has risen as high in the ranks as cartel leader Sandra Avila Beltran. Beltran developed numerous relationships with powerful gang leaders. She soon became one of the most powerful smugglers in the Guadalajara region, managing to stay under the radar until her son was kidnapped and held for ransom in 2001. It took police four years to assemble a case against her, but she was finally taken out of the game in 2007.