The 18 Richest Gangsters Ever

With a speculated wealth ranging from $9 to $30 billion, Escobar became the world’s richest criminal. He also was the world’s most dangerous: three Colombian presidential candidates, over 200 judges, dozens of journalists, over 1,000 police, and countless civil citizens died under his command.

The leader of the Juarez cartel, Fuentes was called “Lord of the Skies” because he used 22 private airliners to import cocaine from Colombia to Mexico.

He is the current ring leader of Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest crime syndicate in Japan’s seedy underbelly of mobsters (called yakuza). The Yakuza crime network brings in “billions of dollars” a year from drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering.

Roman Abramovich has made his wealth conducting illicit activity such as protection rackets, contract killings and arms dealings.

The supposed leader of the Russian Mafia and considered the world’s most powerful money launderer.

An extortionist and gold smuggler in the Mumbai who has also been implicated in terrorist networks, such as al-Qaeda.

The North Korean dictator has an estimated $5 billion net worth and a propensity for extravagant things, like parties on private islands and a 200-foot yacht.

Head of the Sinaloa cartel, “El Chapo” has capitalized on funneling drugs and money between Colombia, Mexico, and the U.S.

Khun Sa was lord of the heroin drug trade that encompassed Burma (now Myanmar), Laos and Thailand. He controlled an estimated 70 percent of Myanmar’s heroin business in the 1980s.

Using small, low-flying airplanes that could move undetected by radar to drop points in Florida and Georgia, Lehder set up a cocaine transportation empire.

The “Cocaine Queen of Miami” worked under Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel during the ‘70s and ‘80s.

He’s the front man for the Genovese crime family, one of the Big 5 mob families in New York.

He was head of the Italian and Jewish Mafias and one of the 400 richest people in America in 1982.

Once in power, he served as a CIA and DEA informant while simultaneously accepting payments from Colombian drug traffickers wanting to push their cocaine through Panama and into the U.S.

Terry Adams is the boss of north London’s family-run syndicate, also known as the “A Team.”

Sourcing heroin directly from Khun Sa, the “King of the Golden Triangle,” he would stash the drugs into the coffins of fallen Vietnam War soldiers and fly them to the U.S.

John Gilligan is one of Ireland’s most notorious crime bosses.

The businessman turned fugitive is alleged to possess millions in undisclosed financial transactions.