Looking through their Instagram, these women look like so many others – proudly sharing pictures and sharing gossip.
But behind their smiling photographs are secrets of drugs, extortion and even murder.
Manchester based Shazia Din and Natalie Wrafter are top bosses of an evil crime gang selling heroin and cocaine in the north of England.
The ‘Godmothers’ were filmed exchanging bundles of hard drugs and cash from the boot of Shazia’s £50,000 Mercedes before their arrest in 2019.
Shameless Shazia, 42 – who is dubbed the ‘Queen of Crime’ in underworld circles – even held Natalie’s young child in her arms as they concluded the deal.
Now The Sun can reveal how the women are taking over mafia-like organisations all over the world.
Bloodthirsty
Experts say that female criminals are becoming even more bloodthirsty and ruthless than men as they blast their way to the top.
In Britain, the number of female gang members is rising all the time.
The Office for National Statistics says that roughly half of the 27,000 child gang members in England are now girls.
And a 2019 government-commissioned reported that the number of female offenders is substantial and growing.
Shazia, from Bury, Greater Manchester, used female drugs couriers to transport heroin and cocaine across northern England as they were less likely to be stopped, communicating with them via encrypted EncroChat software.
Meanwhile, her Instagram accounts present her as a glamorous mum and entrepreneur.
One picture shows her daughter holding the lead of a pet French bulldog in their immaculate home.
Another sees Shazia sporting perfect, white teeth as she smiles for a selfie with a child blowing a kiss next to her.
The Instagram account of her Beauty Booth UK company that sold mascara, lipstick and body lotion online – but was also a front for Din OCG’s money laundering activities – uses photos of celebrities such as Meghan Markle to promote its products.
Double lives
Natalie – who Shazia was supplying with huge quantities of drugs – seems an even less likely crime boss.
Photos from her open Facebook page show her posing with her son, pulling silly faces or staring seductively into the camera, her tousled blonde hair resting on bronzed shoulders.
But police now know that she had risen to become the head of a Doncaster-based crime family after her father Peter Wrafter, 57, was jailed in 2019 for possession of a revolver and a kilogram of heroin.
Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Heart exposed both women’s double lives in July 2019.
A surveillance operation caught them exchanging drugs and cash in Doncaster Prison car park after Natalie visited her father.
Officers later seized 60kg of class-A drugs, £300,000 in cash, Rolex watches, a diamond ring and a handgun and ammunition.
Last year Natalie was sentenced to 11 years at Manchester Crown Court while Shazia was given 15 years.
Detective Inspector Lee Griffin, of Greater Manchester police’s serious and organised crime group, said: “It’s not common to have two females at the very top of organisations like that, but we are now seeing females involved in organised crime groups.
“They are often being used as couriers because they are less likely to be stopped. It can also be common for families to involve females in the family business.”
Godmother killed 180 in 10 years
The rise of terrifying female Godmothers is being tracked by criminologists all over the world.
In Mexico, the crime boss dubbed La China – real name Melissa Margarita Calderon Ojeda – killed 180 people over 10 years before she was arrested, aged 31, in 2015.
La China was shopped to the cops by her terrified boyfriend, who feared he was about to become her next victim.
‘Kim Kardashian of organised crime’
Also, Claudia Ochoa Felix became known as the “Kim Kardashian of organised crime” after she established herself as the top assassin for drug lord Joaquin Guzman, aka El Chapo.
Pictures posted online saw her showing off both her guns and her voluptuous figure before she was choked to death, aged 32, by a rival in September 2019.
Research shows there had been a 400 per cent rise in the number of women imprisoned for federal crimes in Mexico in the three years leading up to her death.
Professor Andrew Chesnut, professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said of the trend: “There’s an inextricable link between sex and death in the culture of these female killers in seeking to be the most desired by the narco men.
“They seek also to be the most brutal among their group of peers.”
In Poland, beautiful Magdalena Kralka, 30, became the number two boss of a hooligan-linked drug and extortion gang based in the city of Krakow.
She rose to the top after her boyfriend was shot dead by anti-terror cops in 2017 and is now on the run, one of Interpol’s most wanted women in the world.
Gunned down while pushing pram
Italy, the historical home of the mafia, is another country where women are overturning male dominance, with the so-called weaker sex now running around a third of crime gangs in the region of Sicily.
Nunzia D’Amico, 37, replaced her brothers as the head of the feared D’Amico clan before she was killed in a hail of bullets as she pushed her baby in a pram in Naples in 2015.
Raffaella D’Alterio nicked-named the “Big Kitten”, became another Naples gang leader following the death of her crime boss husband and until she was arrested aged 46 in 2012.
Corrado De Rosa, a psychiatrist and expert witness in mafia trials, said afterwards: “Women are not usually the ones who commit violence. But today they are much more active and powerful.
“They know the workings of the mafia and they are increasingly at the centre of its business, and they study and learn.”
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