Niko Vorobyov

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Edward Howell |Sam Meadows |Niko Vorobyov |Philip Patrick

For a country that is notorious for its lack of connection to the outside world, North Korea is one of the world experts in cyber warfare. Only this week, North Korean hackers managed to steal $1.5 billion from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, in what is the largest cryptocurrency hack on record. The fact that the stolen money is just over 5 percent of the country’s GDP does not mean the profits will be going to the North Korean people or economy though.

2 months ago | crashoutmedia.com | Niko Vorobyov |Ioan Grillo

For part one, click here. By Niko Vorobyov When the Italian police came for the Camorra killer Genny Earthquake (or Gennaro Panzuto) in Naples he ran to sunny England. He was picked up at the airport in a Rolls Royce and immediately driven to the pub; he settled in a trailer park (caravan site) in Lancashire. “For me, England is freedom. But it’s cold and the food is no good. No good pizza,” the Earthquake tells me.

2 months ago | crashoutmedia.com | Niko Vorobyov |Ioan Grillo

Whilethe U.S.-Mexico-Cartel bomb is at the point of explosion, there are other important mob stories round the planet, some with happier endings. I couldn’t claim to run a Substack on organized crime without looking at the literal original gangsters, in Italy. Niko Vorobyov, our own “Nabokov of narco journalism,” who premiered with this great story from a Bolivian prison, follows with a gripping dispatch from the old country. He got so much killer material it’s in two parts.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Ian O’Doherty |Charles Lipson |Niko Vorobyov |Roger Kimball

The government can take away your liberty for moving furniture, I get that now. When it makes you into a liar, well, that’s a step too far. I’d explained to my five children that dad would be spending the next seventy-one days at an all-male retreat, but when I arrived at Coleman Federal Prison they immediately put me in solitary confinement. The punishment is the process, they say, unless you spend any amount of time in solitary. In that case, the punishment is the punishment.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Becket Adams |Charles Lipson |Matt Ridley |Niko Vorobyov

The word “oligarch” returned to the media lexicon at Donald Trump’s inauguration this week when some of the world’s biggest technology entrepreneurs took their seats while US cabinet ministers were asked to sit dutifully behind them. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg felt the need to demonstrate loyalty to Trump. The president did not insist on them kissing his ring but allotted them places as if they were school prefects listening to their headmaster on speech day.