Crime Syndicates

There are officially three major syndicates, about a hundred small syndicates and at least 10.000 gangs of varied size. While each group has their own set of rules, territory and business, many overlap and interact with each other.

Major Syndicates
Yakuza An old and honorable Japanese criminal organization, the Yakuza demands unswerving loyalty from its members and punishes transgressions harshly. Its members - almost always male, Japanese, and human - are usually identified by their extensive tattoos and sometimes by missing pinky fingers (one of the more minor ways they pay for failures). The Yak’s major areas of influence are prostitution, gambling, sokaiya (shaking down companies for credit and influence), drugs, and chips. Triad The Chinese Triads don’t get a lot of press when compared with the Mafia and the Yaks, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a powerful force in their own right. Each Triad is its own organization, with none of the central control of the Mob and Yak groups. They take a far more enlightened stance toward women and metahumans, numbering many of both (as well as non-Chinese) among their ranks, and also featuring a number of adepts and magicians. Crime-wise, they specialize in extortion, protection, smuggling, gambling, illegal drugs, and BTLs. Mafia Everybody’s heard of the Mafia - you know, that collection of Italian guys in pinstriped suits and pinky rings? Actually, the Mafia’s come a long way in the last couple hundred years, and their influence is still strong all over North America and Europe. Organized into “families” and operating in every major UCAS city, the Mob is involved in just about every lucrative type of crime out there including shipping and smuggling, extortion, loansharking, hijacking, and gambling.

Pueblo Koshari
The Koshari are an Amerindian crime syndicate based in the Pueblo Corporate Council. The Koshari organization is structured in a series of non-overlapping circles which can range from street gangs and syndicates to areas and cities. The size of the circles vary widely too, with membership ranging from a few to over a 100. It's a syndicate which accepts the Awakened, women, metahumans, etc., though it's upper echelon is completely Hopi and Zuni. The Koshari like it's rival crime syndicates is involved in a wide variety of criminal ventures. Currently it's biggest source of income is the smuggling and distribution of BADs. It's also into protection rackets, drugs, BTLs, CalHot chips, illegal gambling, weapons smuggling, prostitution, blackmail rackets, and talislegging. They have muscle and chrome on par with other orgs on a local level, but lack the widespread infrastructure of the Mafia. Employ a 'lot' of shamans, mostly urban and trickster totems.

Gangs
Below the organized-crime syndicates on the criminal ladder are the gangs. Every sprawl has them, and they range in size from small groups that get together for self-protection or mayhem all the way up to well organized, multi-city gangs that nearly rival some of the smaller crime syndicates. Gangs come in many varieties: the most common are garden-variety sprawl gangs that control territory and run criminal enterprises like protection, smuggling, or extortion, but most sprawls are also home to mobile “go-gangs” that prowl the highways looking for fun, profit, and victims. Rarer but no less dangerous are “wiz-gangs” made up of young spellslingers who seek their kicks on both the material and astral planes, and Matrix gangs that roam cyberspace terrorizing other users and hacking systems. Some of the larger and more well known gangs with operations throughout UCAS major cities include the Ancients, the Cutters, and the Spikes, but old gangs die and new ones pop up every day. Wise shadowrunners know that staying on the right side of the right gangs can pay dividends when they need gear or the run starts going to hell.

Organleggers
Getting involved with other criminal enterprises might end up costing you an arm and a leg, but rarely do they mean this literally. With organleggers, all bets are off —and you might end up losing a lot more than a limb or two. Organleggers are the bogeyman nobody likes to talk about—even “legitimate” criminals like the Mafia and the Yak are leery of getting into the business (though this doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t trying). In a society where somebody with a damaged or diseased body part can just head to the hospital or clinic to get it replaced, those body parts have to come from somewhere. Sure, they can be cloned, but that takes time, and often that’s something the recipients don’t have. Enter Tamanous, the big name in organlegging. These charming individuals specialize in getting the right part for the right person - and they don’t care too much about whether the part’s present owner is still using it at the time. They’ve even been known to hack hospital records to find people whose parts match their clients’ specifications, and you’d be surprised to find out how many crooked doctors are on their payroll. As you might guess, Tamanous is a great place for the up-and-coming ghoul (who not only gets paid to do what he’d do anyway, he also gets to keep the scraps), but there are plenty of non-ghouls in the bodysnatching business as well. The organization is secretive, well organized, and - since organlegging is all they do - they’re very good at their jobs. Shadowrunners beware.