Passport to Vice

Money, Bombs, Murder & The Empire of Vice – The Rise of London’s Maltese Syndicate and ‘Big Frank’ Mifsud from the East End to Soho

After World War II, a criminal class took control of the bowels of the ‘shocking’ city of London, cornering a square mile of vice for at least two-and-a-half decades.

This ethnic ‘mafia’, whose brawny recruits became exclusively invested in the world of prostitution, porn and gambling, became known as ‘the Maltese Syndicate’. Violent, property-rich, and under tight control of Big Frank Mifsud and Bernie Silver, they co-existed side by side with gangsters like Billy Hill, Jack ‘Spot’ Comer, the Krays, Albert Dimes, and porn baron Jimmy Humphreys, before their demise at the hands of ‘gangbuster’ Bert Wickstead.

Now their history is told in Matthew Vella’s detailed historical research, with newly-released documents from the Maltese and British national archives, the police statements of the Syndicate men, confidential police memos, and the most extensive search of British newspapers from the mid-1930s right up to the 1980s, with accounts from survivors of the era.