Before Chicago had an Outfit, before New York had families, and long before organized crime acquired Italian surnames, the American frontier already supported something far more fluid—and arguably more powerful: river‑based criminal syndicates moving quietly along the Ohio, Wabash, and Mississippi corridors. These were not loose bands of thieves. They were integrated systems that fused counterfeiting, land seizure, intelligence gathering, transportation monopolies, and political influence into what … Continue reading Ford and the Forgotten River Mafia