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Runways & Rackets: How the Mafia Built America’s Airports episode artwork

EPISODE · Sep 7, 2026 · 12 MIN

Runways & Rackets: How the Mafia Built America’s Airports

from A History of the American Mafia Podcast: Organized Crime, Mob Families, Bosses, Gangsters, Prohibition, Criminal Trials, and the Rise of La Cosa Nostra · host Podily & Josh Linsk

The episode explores how organized crime infiltrated major airport projects across the U.S. and abroad—from New York’s Port Authority and Teamsters Local 103 at JFK to foreign examples in Sydney and Berlin—using construction bribery, labor racketeering, and cargo logistics to funnel illicit profit into legitimate infrastructure. Through court records, wiretaps and congressional testimony we trace the chain from union officials to mafia bosses and see how federal prosecutions began to pry apart this hidden network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Sep 7, 2026

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Runways & Rackets: How the Mafia Built America’s Airports

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How long is this episode of A History of the American Mafia Podcast: Organized Crime, Mob Families, Bosses, Gangsters, Prohibition, Criminal Trials, and the Rise of La Cosa Nostra?

This episode is 12 minutes long.

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This episode was published on September 7, 2026.

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