← The Underworld Podcast
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- [00:01]
Sean Williams
Oh, the car from Carvana's here. Well, will you look at that. It's exactly what I ordered. Like precisely. It would be crazy if there were any catches. But there aren't, right? Right.
- [00:15]
Danny Gold
Because that's how car buying should be with Carvana. You get the car you want, choose delivery or pickup and a week to love it or return it. Buy your car today with Carvana. Delivery or pickup fees may apply. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our 7 day return policy at.
- [00:29]
Sean Williams
Carvana.com Its 12:25am on October 2, 2000, at a Karaoke bar in central Saigon, a raucous, ramshackle corner of Vietnam's southern metropolis, AKA Ho Chi Minh City, where locals and tourists sing, dance and drink themselves into a stupor. But on this particular evening, the revelry is about to be shattered in spectacular bloody style. Sitting on a chair outside the bar is Vu Huang Dong, better known as Dong Ha or Dong the Lesbian. Short and fierce, with a penchant for bobs and black leather jackets, she inherited the empire of a terminal lover to become one of North Vietnam's most feared mob bosses, commanding loyalty through displays of flamboyant, almost ritual violence. Saigon's biggest gangster, though, he does things differently. Tron Van Kam, AKA Nam Kam, had got his start in the slums of District 4, a maze of alleys and canals south of downtown Saigon, moving from backstreet gambling and cockfights to drugs, extortion and sex, all while playing off the powers that be. By the late 1990s, there's barely a top cop, politician, or even journalist that isn't on Cam's payroll. That's good news for gangsters looking to pair up with him, perhaps to profit from Vietnam's roaring heroin trade, or off the backs of the thousands of Vietnamese desperate to be smuggled abroad. Dong Ha has bided her time like this for years, siding with Kam, building a criminal bridge between north and South Vietnam. But now she thinks it's time to move. Things have changed. The lesbian isn't just looking for a partnership anymore. She wants to take Saigon for good. In September 1999, she makes her intentions clear in typical fashion, staging a fake birthday party at one of Kam's clubs before ordering 20 of her men to hurl shrimp paste, dead rats, snakes and human feces onto the dance floor. This is an insult that cannot go unpunished. Kam summons his chief enforcer and puts out a hit on Dung Hat. The enforcer reaches out to two more of his underlings, who discover where the lesbian likes to go Sing karaoke. Then on October 2, they make their move, striding up to Dong Ha's chair and pushing past members of her entourage before pulling a pistol and shooting her point blank in the head. Clubbers scream and drop to the floor. The killers turn and run, disappearing into the neon lit night. Dong Ha played the most dangerous game in Vietnam. She came for the king and she missed. But as her body lies stiffening in the midnight heat, powers elsewhere are about to come down on Nam Kham like a ton of bricks. And within a few short years, the man they call Vietnam's godfather will meet his own grisly end. This is the Underworld Podcast. Hello and welcome all to the weekly show, some calling the most coherent podcast in the manosphere. I'm Sean Williams, a freelance reporter based ordinarily out of New Zealand. But today, as you can clearly see from the. From some more amazing hotel artwork, I'm in another very tiny hotel room, this time in Tokyo, Japan. It says good vibes above my bed, which is, I don't know, I mean, I'm a fan of noodles and tiny houses shaped like wedges and trains that go through neighborhoods. So, yeah, the vibes are good. The vibes are good, man. It's just like the best place. It's the best place on earth. I can't believe this place is just insane.
- [04:31]
Danny Gold
It is.
- [04:32]
Sean Williams
Yeah. And agreeing with me is Danny Gold, of course, my podcast partner of six years in New York City, who I was gonna say is currently in mourning about the baseball, but actually you went to the game yesterday where Judge scored that homer and that is insane. I mean, yeah, tell us about that. And how's it going otherwise?
- [04:54]
Danny Gold
Yeah, I'll keep it quick because, because people, you know, want to get to.
- [04:56]
Sean Williams
It, but people hate anything that's not.
- [04:58]
Danny Gold
People hate anything. Any, any. Anything that. That diverges from the content. But yeah, dude, you know, incredible game. I don't think I've ever seen a live sporting event situation like that when, you know, two on Judge up, he's down 02. The entire stadium is standing. I had the most insane seats, you know, like mid level, but first row, so the entire. On first baseline so I could see everything. And the entire stadium is standing. He's down 02. Runners on first and second and just like bombs it. It was pretty sick. And then, and then most importantly for Underworld fans, they covered the spread. So, you know, we're doing, we're doing, we're doing great over here.
- [05:35]
Sean Williams
Oh, nice one. Yeah, I actually, I was walking past the National Baseball Stadium yesterday. And I saw the floodlights were on, so I ended up seeing like some college game, which was, oh my God, so cool. But anyway, yes, that is not the show, is it? Thanks to everyone, by the way, who signs up to the Underworld podcast. Patreon, we love you. You're the best people in the world. And when my son is old enough, I'm going to make him record a special thank you to the people who helped him through school. Yeah, it's not me, Danny. I didn't help him at all. And there's not a day that goes past in my life without me thinking about that.
- [06:11]
Danny Gold
Okay, Sean, that's patreon.cominterworldpodcast bonus episodes of just $3 a month to support are on Spotify and itunes. You can do the same. And you know, every episode now gets demonetized on YouTube. I don't think it's a conspiracy or Google out to get us. I think it's just the algorithm getting triggered by the fact that we say the word Heroin or cocaine 47 times an episode or talk about bodies being dissolved in acid. So it is what it is. But you know, if you want to support us despite that, send us $3 a month on patreon.com and what can you do?
- [06:41]
Sean Williams
Yeah, man, it's. There's some good stuff. I'm going to be, I think like in about four hours after we do this show. I'm heading out to meet Richard Lloyd Parry. He wrote the People who Eat Darkness. He's lived in Tokyo forever. And we're going to talk about like cults and organized crime and stuff like that. I'm gonna meet a bunch of other people here. I'm gonna meet an exe kusa priest. I'm gonna do a show on that as well. So we've got some stuff coming up if you wanna get in touch with tips, abuse, story ideas. Theunderworldpodcastmail.com is there, is there anything else? Should we dive in? Let's do it. Okay. Yes. This is a story. You know what it's about? It's about the most famous gangster in Vietnamese history, Nam Kam. Because I was in Saigon, AKA Ho Chi Minh City a fortnight ago. Great place. Yeah, really mind blowing city. And part of that trip I SPE in District 4, which is this tight knit warren of alleys and high rises. It's barely 1.5 square miles in size. It's really, really small, surrounded by canals and rivers, but it's home to almost a quarter of a million people. And I took my mic and my phone and a gimbal looked like a complete tool. So we'll have some video of the neighborhood, a couple of really interesting little interviews I did. This is the flourishes, the kind of sort of little editorial flourishes you come into us for, apart from our looks, of course. So here we are, right? This is District four. And Stephen, my guide, and I are on the hunt for namcam's original home. You can see how cramped the streets are. It's different to other central parts of Saigon. If you look up District 4, Saigon on YouTube, you're going to find a bunch of influencers, not including me now, claiming to be exploring Vietnam's most dangerous hood, which is a load of, by the way. This place has really cleaned up in the past decades or so. They're like, there's artisanal cafes and galleries and ceramic stores. It's not dangerous at all.
- [08:29]
Danny Gold
Yeah, the most Dangerous Hood videos are like a global influencer epidemic, man. Though, to be fair, like in the glory days of Ice, we had this like, running joke in the office about some of the more, I guess you could say less credible producers or hosts. There was always like one moment in every episode where they turn to the camera and go. They told us not to go any further, that it wasn't safe, but we decided to go anyway. And that just became like a running, running bit that we had, which was so good.
- [08:55]
Sean Williams
Yeah, Name names. Yeah, yeah, I should say, like, this place is completely legit. It's really lovely, actually. It's a nice neighborhood. But I was visiting Vietnam as a quote unquote tourist. And Stephen, my guide, he definitely wasn't supposed to be showing a report around namcam's old hood, as you're gonna find out. Like, they don't really want people knowing about this history. So we had to kind of, you know, be a bit careful. And I couldn't just go around speaking to the camera, partly because that is what weirdos do. And it's partly why people were a little bit scared to speak to us. So this is namcam's old house, right? You can see it on the video. And like this guy says he's quickly made it out of the slums and into the city. He's turning gambling cash into extortion, drug smuggling and other big time criminal businesses. But how did he get his start in Saigon's underwor? And for that, we're going to have to take it back a while, right? All the way back, in fact, to the 1920s. So Saigon, if you don't Know, Vietnam is this kind of elongated kidney right along the eastern side of Southeast Asia. It's right at the foot city. It's not far from Phnom Penh in Cambodia. It's surrounded by water and cleaved by a series of rivers and canals, not to mention a port that hosts cargo on route from Macau, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Shanghai, all. All over the rest of the world. Right. So in Saigon, the sea, the water is king. It's the biggest city in French Indochina and its underworld is governed by a collection of piratical warlords called the Bin Juan. I know I'm butchering the Vietnamese. Apologies. Imagine Walter world or just a wet Mad Max, which is water world, right?
- [10:34]
Danny Gold
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I know any of this, it already sounds fascinating, but I've been doing a bunch of reading recently about like Shanghai and, and Southern China and South China Seas in like the early, early 20th century, like 1900s. And it is insane how much like piracy was there. Like the, the amount of just like Mad Max pirate gangs of like, like just gangsters just like preying on that whole region, which was an insane amount of trade because you had Hong Kong and, and that whole area of Southern China. It's, it's really like riverboat pirates, stuff like that. It's really fascinating stuff.
- [11:08]
Sean Williams
Yeah, your library is an interesting collection of books at the moment that you're reading stuff on. It's also, I think there's like a national hero in China. One of their national Heroes is a 14th century pirate. I think he's like their kind of Marco Polo. But yeah, like in Saigon, it's a similar kind of history. Right. The guys in charge are the guys with the boats. So these guys, the Bin Juan, they make their money bribing port officials of contraband. They're kidnapping and extorting the rich. They're operating brothels and running protection rackets of prostitutes and gambling dens. And some of them do the Robin Hood shtick. They pump money back into poor neighbourhoods. But others simply take advantage of the poor. In the beginning, these guys are anti French, like all good thinking people should be. The colonialists maintain order in the heart of the city, the part now known as District 1, where almost everybody who's visited the city will have stayed. But just south of it, especially in the Venice like canals and Streets of District 4, Saigon is a wild west. It is lawless and it's under the complete control of the Binjuyen. In 1941, Japan occupies Saigon and the Binjuyen uses their criminal Connections to steal weapons and ammunition with which Vietnamese nationalists can drive out the French from the region altogether. The French run wider. Indochina and the Binjuan, the pirate gangsters, they are causing havoc right in the middle of it, writes the academic Michael Baston. Quote, the Binjian themselves were the byproduct of poverty, of rotten government and devolved power through a kaleidoscope of groups, but also colliders. Colonial intransigence followed by global geopolitical forces, albeit in a localized setting.
- [12:49]
Danny Gold
I mean, we might need to get that translated from academic ease into. Into English. Like, we get the gist of what he's saying, but, like, buddy, you know, write like a. Write like a human being.
- [12:57]
Sean Williams
Come on. Yeah, please, guys, just stop writing like that. Anyway, now we're up to 1945. The war is drawing to a close, and the Japanese are booted out of Saigon.
- [13:09]
Danny Gold
What was like the Japanese occupation of Saigon? Like, I mean, we know, like in China and other places in Southeast Asia. It was brutal. Was it kind of brutal in Saigon at all?
- [13:19]
Sean Williams
I actually don't know a lot about that. I went to one of the museums in Saigon, the one where it's mostly about the Vietnam War. But there was a little bit on the Japanese occupation. It wasn't particularly nice, but I don't think they did the same kind of stuff like they did in the. In the Philippines and Korea. Like, I don't think there was quite that. I think they ruled through a proxy, a bit like a Vichy sort of government. But, yeah, maybe we should. I should look into that. It's really interesting stuff. Anyway, the victorious French in the war, unbelievable, given that they are serial surrenderers, are back in control of the city. But they've got a new problem, right? And this is another one they can't handle. And it's called communism. And the Binjuyen go all in on the Reds. They instigate a workers uprising later that year, which is put down. But in September 1945, a lieutenant in one of the biggest gangs orders the massacre of 150 European men, women and children. And the French respond by mass arresting and executing gangsters and communists. And that is met in turn by attacks on French positions across southern Saigon by an army of 5,000 plus pirates, led by the city's most feared kingpin, Ba Duong. This brutal fighting continues for months, the Binjuien, against French colonial troops. But on February 16, 1946, Ba Duong, the big kingpin, he's killed in a French air raid. And in the wake of his death, the Binjuyen splits and they turn on one another, the result of which is that Saigon's underworld broadly switches its allegiance to the French. The French then agreeing to turn a blind eye to their criminal pillaging so long as they pledge to fight the communists that are already taking over North Vietnam. And this they do well. So well, in fact, that the French reward the Bintuien with monopolies on lucrative Saigon trades at the ports and in trucking. And it's in this world that Nam Kham is born in 1947, the fifth child of a poor family in District 4. The young boy is a born rebel by all accounts, and in his teens, he's taken under the wing of an influential gangster by the name of Huan Taiwan. Nam Khem becomes a lookout and a street dealer for Thay's brother in law, Sy. So Thai and Tsai are nam Khem. In 1954, Vietnam shakes off the French and becomes a Cold War battleground. You've got Ho Chi Minh's communists in North Vietnam backed by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam, backed by America and its allies, based out of Saigon. And by this time, there is a new cash cow in town, and it's named Danny. Yes, your friend of mine. Heroin.
- [15:56]
Danny Gold
I was gonna guess rare earth minerals. Rare earth Minerals.
- [16:00]
Sean Williams
That's just 99% of our WhatsApp chat at the moment. Some of mine are doing really well. Anyway, I'll talk to you.
- [16:05]
Danny Gold
Dude, they're doing incredible. I should have listened to you a month ago. They're doing. They're all up, like 200%. It's insane.
- [16:10]
Sean Williams
It's actually mad. We should just do that on the Patreon. People should just follow.
- [16:14]
Danny Gold
We should just give financial advice, I think. Do you feel licensed for that? We should be giving financial advice for that one.
- [16:18]
Sean Williams
Oh, my God. Yeah, that's.
- [16:20]
Danny Gold
Bet on the Yankees and invest in rare earth mineral stocks.
- [16:23]
Sean Williams
That's where this podcast was always going to end up anyway. Saigon becomes a key transshipment point for heroin heading out from Asia into the biomarkets of north and South America. New York, Montreal, Mexico City, Buenos Aires is shepherded by the Binjuyen and ferried mostly by Corsican gangsters through the port cities of Gaziantep and Istanbul in Turkey into Marseille and other European port cities. We've. We've spoken a bunch about this kind of route. Right.
- [16:51]
Danny Gold
I think these are. These might be two separate things. And correct me if I'm wrong, because the French Connection was just, you know, it was mostly. They were the Corsicans, they were moving the heroin or opium to be turned into heroin from Turkey to Marseille to America, usually through New York. And correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the Vietnam connection, which was some of those same guys, but not the same network. And that was, you know, it was slightly different, right?
- [17:12]
Sean Williams
It was slightly different. There was some of the same guys involved. Yeah, we should probably do a separate show on this because there is loads of quite dense kind of stuff to get through with the history and how that route differed from the stuff coming from like Central Asia and down into Turkey and whatnot. But yeah, all of which is to say that this is like a huge business, right? I mean, yeah, the main route, like you said, was the one through Turkey. But this is also making a lot of money, guys.
- [17:43]
Danny Gold
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- [19:30]
Sean Williams
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com this is a real good.
- [19:58]
Danny Gold
Story about Bronx and his dad Ryan.
- [20:00]
Sean Williams
Real United Airlines customers.
- [20:02]
Danny Gold
We were returning home and one of.
- [20:04]
Sean Williams
The flight attendants asked Bronx if he.
- [20:05]
Danny Gold
Wanted to see the flight deck and.
- [20:07]
Sean Williams
Meet Kathy and Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat.
- [20:09]
Danny Gold
I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me.
- [20:13]
Sean Williams
Of myself when I was at age.
- [20:15]
Danny Gold
That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future.
- [20:20]
Sean Williams
It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight.
- [20:23]
Danny Gold
Deck will stick with us forever.
- [20:25]
Sean Williams
That's how good leads the way. American GIs are pouring into Saigon at this point, of course, and they're bringing their own cottage industries of sex, drugs and booze to the Bin Shui. And among them, one man stands head and shoulders above all other gangsters. And this is BEI Vien, the second generation in today's Vietnam gang episode. Now, this guy's life has more than a little of the Bond villain about it. He lives in central Saigon, where it's Notre Dame Cathedral currently stands, and he's surrounded by a crocodile infested moat. Decades before Pablo Escobar had his hippos, Right? So this guy also keeps a collection of pythons, a leopard and a tiger in a cage. And rumors swirl, of course, that Baviette feeds disloyal henchmen to the tiger. Although, as we've learned from previous shows on organized crime and big cats, that's probably, yeah, that's probably a legend. The French Connection, however, and the Vietnam connection is making so much money that it attracts gangsters from all kinds of places to Saigon. The Corsicans are joined there by Armenians, Algerians, Chinese, and many others, in fact. And all of them are paying BEI Vien to get gear on and off at the city's docks. By 1954, he's the richest man in the city, with a personal army of some thousand men. But as the war in Vietnam continues and Saigon becomes a nest of spies, turncoats and rebels, one man alone cannot control the chaos. So BEI Vien's empire splits into four separate groups, each headed by one of Saigon's so called four kings. And one of them is Hun Tai, with his brother in law based Sai working under him and Namcam working under him.
- [22:03]
Danny Gold
So the two brothers and Nam Kam, our little guy is going to become the big guy under. Under one of them.
- [22:08]
Sean Williams
Yeah.
- [22:08]
Danny Gold
But also when this split happens into four, is it like they're all under operating under that one guy or does he just kind of fade and the other four split up his territory?
- [22:18]
Sean Williams
Yeah, the latter. So they kind of like carve up the city basically. He can't take control of the entire place now. It's too teeming with all kinds of stuff going on. So they kind of split it into sections according to these four big kingpins. And one of which, yeah, is, is the guy who Nam Kam is working for. And in December 1962, Bayside stabs a man to death protecting a gambling den. And Nam Kam, he's just 13, right? He takes the fall a couple Years later in 1964, he's sentenced to three years in prison for quote, intentionally causing bodily harm. No shit. And he's released just one year later. So this is just another one to add to that massive list of brutal gangsters who've served a clownishly short prison term in their early age. After his release, remember, this guy is still only 16 years old. Nam Kam is dispatched to serve in the South Vietnamese army and he remains in the system until the end of the war in 1975, when Saigon falls to the communists and Vietnam is united as one country. Although he doesn't really serve as a regular grunt, he bribes and manipulates his ways to a logistics role, which is going to be the blueprint for the way he runs his criminal business after the war. Here's some more. District 4 ASMR by the way, this allegedly is Namcam's old street. It's interesting speaking to locals in District 4 that sort of. Nobody knows much about his early years. He seems to have been one of just many local mobsters, right, who made their money from gambling and other street level crime all the way through this period. Nam Kam is getting in legal trouble for his gambling operations, cockfighting, numbers games, stuff like this. But after each arrest, his star continues to rise, either by making criminal friends behind bars or by befriending influential figures in law enforcement and politics. In 1989, he flexes these news contacts after yet another arrest when he, quote, atones for his crimes by snitching on the location of 20 secret casinos across Saigon. All of the casinos are raided and shuttered by the cops. But none of them, surprise, surprise, are run by Nam Kam. So he's figured out by this point that instead of fighting the authorities like the early pirates of Saigon, the he can work with them, using them to wipe out his underworld enemies. Around the start of the 1990s, therefore, Namkam's empire branches out from District 4, and he sets his eyes on District 1, the heart of Saigon. But Namkam didn't just pitch up on any street. He came here. The place you can see in the video. This is called the Huynh Tuk Kang Black Market. A high rise maze of tenements, market stalls, billiard halls and brothels standing right on the border of Districts one and four. Now, just looking at the place, you can see what a thriving criminal marketplace it must have been like 35 years ago, when the city was nowhere near as developed as it is now. Cramped, full of people, a perfect place to sell watches and radios, for example. Which is exactly what Nam Kam did. He's the chief of an empire that runs across the entire city and includes not just roulette tables, but card games, cock fights, match fixing on top level football matches. Right. Nam Kam also extorts protection money from bars, clubs and restaurants across Saigon. And he puts a huge amount of his profits into bribes for officials and local police chiefs to make sure everything that he does is protected and above the law. Few would even try getting in his way. But in the rare case, the bribes can't keep somebody from going for his empire. And Nam Kam isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. In one episode, he gets rid of a rival gangster by having henchmen pour acid in the guy's face. This entire time, Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security has been going above the police's heads to run an investigation on Namcam. In 1995, they detain him and they send him to a re education camp. But he pays thousands of dollars to an assortment of politicians, judges, and even the head of the state radio station to lobby on his behalf. In 1997, October, he's released almost a year early. Has he been re educated? No, he has not. And by October 1999, he's opened even more gambling dens across the city by now aiming for high rollers. And he's spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on, quote, diplomatic expenses. This might not seem like a lot of money, right, compared even to Asian gangsters at the time. But remember that Vietnam has a GDP per capita of 1999 of under 400 dol. So Namcam is making insane amounts of cash compared to the average guy in District 4. He also holds tons of lavish parties for bribed officials, including cognac, brandy, and platoons of sex workers. One police reporter even gets a brand new car in return for not writing about namcam.
- [27:25]
Danny Gold
So his bread and butter, though, it's. It's the gambling.
- [27:27]
Sean Williams
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Always has been. Yeah, from the start, he's just like opening bigger and bigger casinos, kind of like making a bigger, I guess, going for higher. Higher and higher rollers all the time. At the same time, Nam Kam is beginning to branch out of Vietnam. He's hooking up with some truly global criminals. So he's just about to sort of branch outside the country. He travels to Macau, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the US Trying to extend his business into drugs, bigger casinos, and sort of financial frauds on foreign soil. But perhaps for the first time since he arrived on the scene, namcam is about to face a hefty challenge from a rival gangster. And at the end of the 20th century, that looks like Deng. Ha. You'll recognize Deng from the code open, so you know this isn't going to end well for her, but she's an interesting character in her own right, not least because she's a woman, which it probably doesn't need saying, is not the usual mobster profile of the time. Born in 1965 in Haiphong, the major port city into Hanoi close to Ha Long Bay, Deng rises through the ranks of Hanoi's underworld by being a complete nutcase. Unhinged, basically mixing charm with a penchant for violence and managing to control fleets of young men to do her bidding. Dung thrives on public displays of power, bar fights, nightclub brawls, and at one point, she leaves a rotting pig's head in a rival kingpin's karaoke bar. Very godfather and the polar opposite of Nam Kam, who's for the most part, this quiet, stealthy operator who'd much rather go the way of the peso than the plomo. In her 20s, Dunne begins an affair with one of Haiphong's biggest mob bosses, a guy coated in tattoos who's been been in and out of prison his entire life. Here's the website saigonir quote. The consensus seemed to be that Deng used this relationship as a way to gain power and boost her profile in Haiphong. Her first love didn't last long, as addiction turned her man from a feared mob boss into an easy Manipulated drug addict. In this moment of weakness, Deng usurped his power and dominated his thriving casino business. By the time he died of hiv, the Deng had solidified herself as a mob boss. Deng's next move is to hop in bed with an even bigger gangster, a guy called Hung Kong. Problem is, he gets arrested for murder and robbery pretty much straight after they get together, and he's sentenced to be executed. So Deng plots to spring him from prison, going Nam Kam's way, bribing prison authorities, trying to talk her way into the facility. On Hung's judgment day, Dong hooks up with a convict on the inside who says he'll help Hong escape. And he pays off guards to turn a blind eye while she brings him a bag as a farewell present. But this isn't candy, saucy photos, or even panini World cup football stickers. In the bag. It is grenades. I don't know why I thought of panini stickers. What the hell was I thinking?
- [30:18]
Danny Gold
Yeah, I don't even know what that means, but I just take it like just a Sean thing at this point.
- [30:21]
Sean Williams
It's the obsession of every. Every young boy in suburban England. It is not any of those things, Danny. It is. Of course, it's grenades. I mean, why not. Why not have grenades in there? Hung grabs these grenades, and alongside his convict friend, he gets as far as the prison gates, threatening to blow everybody sky high. But at this point, it's quite funny. The plan really falls down, because now they're just two guys standing in a heavily fortified courtyard holding grenades. So the guards just shoot the fellow convict dead, and they march home, back to his cell, and he hangs himself soon after that. This is. Why didn't she just give him a gun? Like, why the quint. What is going on? This is, it's fair to say, a pretty big failure for Deng. But she takes it on the chin, or rather the scalp, because soon after Hung's suicide, she chops her long hair off, trades in dresses for jeans and boots, and usually rides around Hai Fung with this beautiful girl riding pillion on her motorbike. Dong becomes known as Dong the Lesbian. Not the most imaginative nickname. But in the mid-1990s, she's sentenced to three years prison for racketeering, losing a lot of her criminal momentum when she emerges. In 1998, she moves south, ditching her life in Haiphong for the big prize, Saigon. At first, Nam Kam hopes to recruit Dong into his crew. But the lady's not for turning again. And rather than join forces with Vietnam's Most powerful gangster. Despite having few contacts and having witnessed the deaths of at least two kingpins she was close to, she opts for a different plan. Dung Beetle. Get it? Dung, yeah. Oh, God, that's even worse when I say it, man. In September.
- [32:05]
Danny Gold
That's not good.
- [32:06]
Sean Williams
It's not good. Isn't it? On September 29, 1999, Dung pulls her fake birthday stunt, the one from the cold open, getting 20 of her gang members to hurl assorted dead animals and dog all over the dance floor of one of namcam's premier Saigon nightclubs, Monaco. This is too much for Nam Khan, and he has his men blow Deng's brains all over the sidewalk on October 2000. It's the most spectacular killing in Vietnamese underworld history. And finally, something no police chiefs, despite whatever backhanders they're getting, can ignore. But while Nank Khan might look to a future unencumbered by marauding lesbian mobsters, the hide doesn't last so long for him. In May 2001, the Vietnamese government launches a new investigation into his criminal empire, Operation Z501. Soon, officials discovered that 12 hitmen had traveled from Hanoi to Saigon two months before the shooting and that Namcam was behind it. Cops then arrest Namcam's executioner, and he soon rats on his boss, telling the guys at Operation Z501 that Namcam has masterminded this entire thing. That October, cops raid one of Namcam's gambling dens in District 8, right next to District 4. They then arrest a large number of his crew, and then a couple months later, they arrest the big guy himself. He's at the home of one of his mistresses. Most people, of course, expect namcam to survive the ordeal. He survived everything else, after all, and pretty much anybody with any semblance of power is in the man's pocket. But not this time. The man leading the case against Namkam is a leading military general, and he's known to be unbiable because he doesn't mind, quote, eating communal meals and sleeping in a bed at the Interior Ministry itself. I mean, a leading communist who's actually maybe genuinely a communist, like, yeah, rarer than hen's teeth, anyway. In early 2003, the historic Nam Kam and Associates trial begins at Saigon's grand old palace of Justice. Beautiful building, well worth checking out. It's the largest process in modern Vietnamese history. And it doesn't just go for the kingpin himself. 154 others, officials, police officers, members of the media are in the dock with him, writes Time magazine. Quote, Since Nam Kam's tentacles reached far into the government, the case simultaneously became Vietnam's biggest corruption crackdown. Two of the 18 government officials on trial with him this month were members of the Light Central Committee, The Communist Party's 150 member main decision making body. One of the accused was Ho Chi Minh City's police chief for years. Another, the national radio chief, is accused of writing a letter in 1996 that helped secure Kam's early release from a re education camp for a previous arrest. Apart from the courtroom proceedings, more than 100 police officers and other officials have been suspended from duty because they're suspected of being on Cam's payroll. The Vietnamese state faces a bit of a quandary with all this. Does it maximize coverage of the Nam Kam trial to show that it's cracking down on gangsters and corruption? Or does it suppress the full extent of the crimes? Fearing that citizens would lose their faith in their rulers? In the end, leaders in Hanoi chose a middle path. The trial's opening hours are broadcast live on national TV, showing namcam handcuffed and dressed in striped prison scrubs. Reporters aren't allowed inside, presumably to allow the regime to cut the feed if anything too embarrassing is said. And a party official warns the press that they should report, quote, only what is good for the nation. On June 5, 2003, the court reaches its verdict. Nam Kam is guilty of murder and bribery and is sentenced to death. Four other members of his crew received the same sentence, one of whom breaks down in the dark as it's read out. Nam Khan remains unmoved throughout the proceedings, which include being fined $77,000, which the court says, quote, equals the amount of bribery he's committed. Half of his property is also confiscated.
- [36:08]
Danny Gold
Yeah, even for a poor country like 77,000, doesn't seem like that much like I could have become the king of Vietnam. I feel like right now.
- [36:16]
Sean Williams
Yeah, it's not a lot of money, is it? No, I think he probably did several million more than that almost a year later. At 3:30am on June 3, 2004, Nam Kam and his four fellow death row inmates were awoken by guards at a prison in Long Binh, a rural part of eastern Saigon, and told to write final letters to their families. Nam Khan writes to his daughter, a Buddhist, telling her he regrets what he's done in his life and to his two grandsons to urge them not to repeat his actions. The group are given fresh clothes and a meal. At 5am Squad cars bring the five men to a firing range nearby. Two of them keep talking and laughing throughout. And then they faint when they spot coffins and freshly dug graves beside the grange. A judge then reads out a rejection of clemency as crowds gather around the grounds and at 5am Multiple shots ring out. Nam Kam is dead. And that is pretty much where our story ends today, guys. We started with one execution, we ended with another. It's just the kind of uplifting content you are all here for. Organized crime, of course, in Vietnam, doesn't die with Nam Kam. As late as 2008, I read a really interesting report. Saigon is then one of Asia's key transshipment points for heroin and meth coming out of the Golden Triangle and into Europe and the United States. It's not a huge amount of information on that these days. Could probably do with a bit of a reporting. But today Vietnam's underworld has gone more white collar, whether in scam compounds littered across Southeast Asia. You can see our previous show with Nathan and Lindsay for more on that. Or massive, like, gang busting frauds. Last year, for example, billionaire Saigon businesswoman Truong Milan was sentenced to death for a $44 billion fraud on one of the country's biggest banks, which. Yeah, which, I mean, when you think of the GDP per capita just a generation ago is $400. Is that kind of, is that progress? I mean. Yeah, I don't know whether or not it is. That is about as close as you're going to get to a positive end. Anyway, let's play this one out with some goofy footage of me on the back of a moped because why not?
- [38:22]
Danny Gold
Yeah. Anyway, patreon.com the normal podcast for more bonus episodes. I can't wait to see this footage, to be honest with you. Yeah. Spotify, itunes.
- [38:32]
Sean Williams
I'm not sure this is the future for me sitting around with a gimbal and an iPhone like an influencer.
- [38:39]
Danny Gold
Yeah, it's not. It's just embarrassing. I don't know how people do it for a living. Anyway, until next week, folks.