Mafia

A mafia is a type of organized crime syndicate whose primary activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions. Secondary activities may be practiced such as gambling, drug trafficking, loan sharking, and fraud. The term was originally applied to the Sicilian mafia, but has since expanded to encompass other organizations of similar methods and purpose, such as in "the Russian mafia" or "the Japanese mafia", and is applied informally by the press and public, but the criminal organizations themselves have their own terms; for example, the original Sicilian and Italian-American mafia call themselves "cosa nostra", while the Japanese mafia calls itself "yakuza".