French Connection

The French Connection was a scheme through which heroin was smuggled from Turkey to France and then to the United States. The operation reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was responsible for providing the vast majority of the illicit heroin used in the United States. It was headed by the Corsican criminals Paul Carbone (and his associate François Spirito) and Antoine Guérini, and also involved Auguste Ricord, Paul Mondoloni, Salvatore Greco, and Meyer Lansky. Most of its starting capital came from assets that Ricord had stolen during World War II when he worked for Henri Lafont, one of the heads of the Carlingue (French Gestapo) during the German occupation in World War II.