(See also Top 20 Notorious Female Gangsters)
(See also Top 10 Richest Gangsters Of All Time)
(See also Top 13 Notorious Mexican Drug Lords)
(See also Top 15 Richest Drug Lords of All Time)
(See also Top 25 Extremely Notorious Gangsters)
(See also Top 10 Most Notorious Female Drug Kingpins)
10. Gertrude Lythgoe
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| (Gertrude Lythgoe) |
Gertrude Lythgoe is one of the only women to ever operate an alcohol bootlegging ring during the male-dominated Prohibition Era. Records show that the amount of liquor being exported to the United States from the Bahamas grew from 47,300 liters (12,500 gal) in 1917 to 950,000 liters (250,000 gal) in 1923. Bootleggers like Lythgoe were a huge reason why.
Lythgoe would enter the bootlegging business when she met a London liquor exporter. Feeling the pinch in his pockets from the ban of liquor in America, he realized that he could more easily import liquor from Nassau, Bahamas to the United States. Lythgoe opened up a liquor wholesale shop in Nassau and the profits poured in.
She found people to be quite skeptical of her since she was a woman. However, they could not argue with her prices, savvy, and business acumen. Her success eventually earned her the nickname “The Bahama Queen.”
One would-be competitor made the mistake of throwing mud at her name and bad-mouthing her product. She kidnapped him from a barbershop while he was getting a shave, pulled a gun on him, and threatened his life should he ever talk badly of her liquor again. She never received another complaint.
She was eventually arrested in New Orleans and charged with smuggling 1,000 cases of liquor into the city. However, the charges were soon dropped. Lythgoe would later leave the bootlegging business and settle in Los Angeles, where she passed away at age 86.
9. Jemeker Thompson
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| (Jemeker Thompson) |
Jemeker Thompson came from very poor beginnings and was even evicted from her home as a young child. An extreme fear of poverty and feelings of desperation propelled her into the drug trade.
Being young, inexperienced, and a woman made her an easy target in the deadly Los Angeles cocaine trade. She met an older man named Anthony Mosley who took her under his wing. Together, they made a formidable team (and couple, eventually getting married and having a son).
Although the profits for cocaine were consistent, a new drug soon began sweeping through Los Angeles and turning people rich almost overnight—crack. The pair made the switch from cocaine to crack trafficking and became some of the biggest players on the Los Angeles scene.
They also made some mighty dangerous enemies along the way. One day, while washing his car, Mosley was shot and killed in cold blood. Though Thompson was saddened and alone, she would continue to traffic drugs through Los Angeles, making hundreds of thousands of dollars.
She continued making bigger connections in the Los Angeles scene and eventually met a man who called himself “Cheese.” He would help her continue to grow her empire. Things were going well until Cheese got arrested and shamelessly ratted out his partner.
Having no other choice, Jemeker went on the run, leaving Los Angeles for five years without being apprehended. She would return to Los Angeles for her son’s sixth-grade graduation only to be promptly arrested by authorities at the ceremony. Imprisoned for 15 years in a maximum security prison, she found peace in religion. Upon her release, she started her own ministry, which she still runs to this day.
8. Thelma Wright
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| (Thelma Wright) |
Thelma Wright was just a normal Catholic girl before she met her future husband Jackie Wright, a wholesale heroin supplier in the bountiful Philadelphia drug scene. They fell in love in a whirlwind romance, got married, and had a son in 1982.
Jackie had ties to the Black Mafia—a feared Philadelphia street gang infamous for murdering police. This made him a very powerful man who also earned himself a few very dangerous enemies. In 1986, Jackie was found rolled up in a rug with a bullet in his head. Thelma was suddenly left all alone to fend for herself and her four-year-old son. Forcing herself into her husband’s business, she became the primary source of heroin and cocaine in Philadelphia. She would even transport the drugs cross-country to Los Angeles.
At her peak, Wright was estimated to earn over $400,000 a month. This granted her high levels of respect among her male contemporaries as well as nicknames like “Boss Lady” and “Queen Pen.” But it was by no means a glamorous fairy tale. In July 1991, after years of avoiding the darker side of the drug business, she and her friends were caught in the crossfire of a deadly shootout at a Philadelphia nightclub.
Later that year, a member of her major clientele got arrested trying to transport cocaine by mail through the United States Postal Service. Thelma wisely saw the warning signs, and she decided to leave drugs behind before greed got her arrested or killed. She kept a low profile for more than a decade before publishing her life story, With Eyes From Both Sides—Living My Life In and Out of the Game.
Today, Thelma Wright is a motivational speaker who strongly advises nobody to follow in her footsteps and to avoid the drug game completely. Said Wright, “It is a ‘no win.’ Two options: death or jail. That’s it.”
7. Marllory Dadiana Chacon Rossell
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| (Marllory Dadiana Chacon Rossell) |
Marllory Dadiana Chacon Rossell is one of the most powerful people in the Latin drug world. She is accused of leading one of the largest drug trafficking rings in Central America and being the largest active money launderer in Guatemala.
Rossell is believed to be responsible for regularly transporting thousands of pounds of cocaine from Guatemala into the United States. However, her real specialty is money laundering. She is estimated to have transactions exceeding tens of millions of dollars in dirty money each month.
Trying to mask the large sums of money that she brought in, Chacon Rossell started Bingoton Millionario, a privately run lottery. The large scale of her operations triggered the attention of the United States Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). They marked her and her organization as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs). “Marllory Chacon’s drug trafficking activities, and her ties to the Mexican drug cartels, make her a critical figure in the narcotics trade. By designating Chacon, OFAC is disrupting those activities and closing off from the United States financial system the network of companies aiding Chacon’s illicit activities,” said OFAC Director Adam J. Szubin.
In taking this action, the United States placed her under sanctions from the Kingpin Act. Yet, there has never been sufficient evidence to make the charges stick, and Rossell remains at large today.
6. Charmaine Roman
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| (Charmaine Roman) |
Charmaine Roman was a Jamaican drug lord and the ringleader of a marijuana trafficking organization that transported tons of cannabis into the central Florida area. Her organization was violent, efficient, and successful. She quickly grossed millions of dollars from the booming pot economy.
Roman gained an affinity for the finer things in life. She bought a very posh condominium but was more notable for her numerous automobiles such as the Land Rover. This triggered authorities to investigate her more thoroughly. Roman, however, might have had the greatest luck of any drug lord ever. She would frequently win generous amounts from the state lottery amassing $187,000 in total winnings from 44 tickets.
Records revealed by the Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas show that she deposited millions of dollars there from 2010 to 2012. This allowed her to use the casino to launder her group’s money. This temporarily threw law enforcement off her trail, but not for long. She was eventually caught attempting to deliver 180 kilograms (400 lb) of marijuana in an Orlando parking lot.
Her arrest was part of a major sting operation that netted over 1,450 kilograms (3,200 lb) of marijuana, $200,000 in cash, several illegal firearms, and resulted in 50 arrests. When taken into custody, Roman had several passports with varying names, four Florida drivers’ licenses, and multiple Social Security cards, leaving authorities stumped as to what her actual identity was.
5. Stephanie St. Clair
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| (Stephanie St. Clair) |
Stephanie St. Clair was a French-African woman known to many as “Queenie.” She immigrated to Harlem in 1912, and in 1922, she used $10,000 to open her own numbers bank. This was little more than an illegal street lottery so she enlisted the infamous street gang the Forty Thieves for protection. These men had such a vicious reputation that not even the mobsters of New York would attempt to muscle them.
Craving more control as her earnings began to grow, she soon branched off from the Forty Thieves to start her own gang. Within a year, she was running an organization of 50 people including legendary Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson. In 1923, she was worth more than $500,000—over $6.75 million once adjusted for today’s inflation.
However, as she continued to rake in such large amounts of money—north of $200,000 a year—Prohibition was ending and the Great Depression was taking form. Many of New York City’s mob bosses saw their profits fall dramatically as the people that they were extorting were becoming poor. Naturally, they wanted in on St. Clair’s huge pot. Infamous mobster Dutch Schultz waged war on St. Clair in one of Harlem’s bloodiest gang showdowns in its history. By the time it was over, more than 40 people were murdered.
St. Clair felt that the police were assisting Schultz in their feud, leading her to take out many advertisements in Harlem newspapers accusing them of corruption. This drew the ire of law enforcement, and she was arrested. When she went to trial, she exposed the large number of officials whom she was bribing for protection and to turn a blind eye to her dealings. Several policemen were stripped of their badges as a result.
Eventually, Queenie no longer had the protection or manpower to withstand the onslaught from the mobsters. She reluctantly agreed to sign a truce that transferred control of her numbers operation—including all profits for the year—over to Schultz and the Italian mafia. This effectively put her out of business.
4. Raffela D’Alterio
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| (Raffela D’Alterio) |
Raffela D’Alterio is an Italian Mafia godmother who was the leader of a faction of the Camorra family. Originally a modest housewife in Naples, she entered the mob life when her husband, Nicalo Pianese, was riddled with bullets and killed in 2006. D’Alterio took over the large scale operations of her husband’s crime syndicate.
Extortion, counterfeit money production, and drug trafficking were all fair game with D’Alterio at the helm. After surviving gunshots in a homicide attempt, she was bestowed the nickname “Miconia”— or “The Big Female Kitten”—since she seemingly had nine lives.
She was also highly enterprising. She built powerful ties with other Camorra factions that infamously deal in counterfeit goods, waste disposal, and construction. Italian authorities estimate that they generate up to $218 billion a year.
In 2012, authorities raided the homes of members of the D’Altorie syndicate. They arrested her and 65 members in a large takedown operation. In addition, law enforcement seized roughly $20 million in cars and properties during the raid.
3. Rosetta Cutolo
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| (Rosetta Cutolo) |
Born in 1937, Rosetta Cutolo is the older sister of former Cammora boss Raffaele Cutolo, who also headed the Nuova Commora Organizzita (NCO). Raffaele would eventually become incarcerated and, feeling that his sister Rosetta was the only person whom he could trust, left day-to-day operations of his crime family to her.
Completing tasks delegated to her by her brother through prison conversations, Cutolo soon became the face of the NCO and the true power behind the family. Rosetta negotiated cocaine deals with South American drug cartels, attempted to blow up the local police headquarters, and was the inspiration for Corrista, a movie loosely based on her life.
Bringing in billions of dollars, the NCO had their hands in everything from politics to waste management. They were even part of the country’s milk, fish, and coffee trades. Rosetta Cutolo would hold her position for 15 years, becoming one of the most powerful women to ever head a criminal organization. She was so successful, she purchased and lived in a massive 365-room castle.
A large-scale law enforcement raid in 1981 led to Cutolo’s downfall. She was able to sneak out of a secret entrance and remained a fugitive for 12 years. In 1993, at age 57, police finally found her hideout. Cutolo complied with no resistance, saying that she was tired of running. She was charged with Mafia association and, after her lawyer got her acquitted on nine murder charges, sentenced to nine years in prison. Her sentence was later reduced to five years.
2. Maria Licciardi
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| (Maria Licciardi) |
Sister of Secondigliano Alliance (SA) cofounder Genaro Licciardi, Maria Licciardi rose to power after both her brothers and husband were killed. She was a natural and immediately ran SA operations with great impunity. She was so powerful that she earned the nickname “Boss of Bosses.”
The primary areas of control and income for the group were extortion and drug trafficking. She largely expanded these through a coalition with the Lu Russo clan. However, she greatly differed from her male predecessors in one huge area—she supported prostitution. Prior to Licciardi, there was an unspoken rule among the mobsters that women’s bodies were not to be sold. She had no such hangup, however, since prostitution rings were very profitable. However, they were run savagely under her watch. The women were often drugged 24/7 and murdered once they got too old to be profitable.
Because Licciardi played the role of the good girl by giving sporadic handouts and jobs to people in the Naples area, she and the SA were very well liked. But the coalition that she formed with the La Russo clan would ultimately lead to her downfall. In 1999, there was a shipment of pure heroin that was so potent, Licciardi feared that it would kill the SA’s customers and negatively affect her bottom line. The La Russo family, driven by greed, distributed the heroin anyway and killed several people—11 in one month alone.
This rash of deaths resulting from the heroin drew the heat of law enforcement and caused many of her constituents to be arrested in subsequent crackdowns. The La Russo Clan then broke their alliance, and the two factions declared all-out war on one another. There were car bombings, and bazookas were fired in the streets.
After more than 120 people were killed by the feuding, Licciardi went into hiding with police hot on her trail. Even her hideout was lavish—a huge attic in an abandoned warehouse with marble flooring and a whirlpool.
Feeling the pressure from the investigations, Licciardi had the district attorney’s office bombed to make them back off. Unfortunately for her, they persisted even more stringently. Two years later, they were finally able to nab Licciardi on several federal charges. Although imprisoned, it is speculated that she is still running the organization and even calling hits when needed.
1. Griselda Blanco
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| (Griselda Blanco) |
The original cocaine godmother, Griselda Blanco, became a national icon after the release of the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys. This film was loosely based around her life and dealings within the Medellin drug cartel. It is estimated that she brought in $80 million per month during her short-lived career in the ’80s.
What separates her from other female crime lords is that none of the others seemed to have her insatiable bloodlust. She committed her first murder when she was 11 years old, killing a kidnapped young boy after his family failed to pay the ransom. She even killed her three ex-husbands which earned her the title “Black Widow.” Blanco was ultimately implicated in over 200 murders.
The murder of one of her Colombian supplier’s nieces would turn the Medellin cartel against her, and there were suddenly many open attempts on her life. In addition to this, she was also evading law enforcement because of all the carnage that she was wreaking on Miami. She was incarcerated in 1985 in connection with three homicides but was released in early 2004 due to technicalities and errors by the prosecution. Authorities deported her back to Colombia, where she was gunned down in 2012.