He studied at Columbia University and pursued postgraduate studies at the universities of Cambridge and Yale and at the London School of Economics. A staff writer at The New Yorker since 2006, he has investigated organised crime, drug trafficking, economic power and contemporary political conflicts.

He is the author of The Snakehead (2009), No diguis res (2020), an investigation into the Northern Ireland conflict that received the Orwell Prize for Political Writing; L’imperi del dolor (2021), about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis in the United States; Maleantes. Historias reales de estafadores, asesinos, rebeldes e impostores (2023); and El fill de l’oligarca (2026). His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate and The New York Review of Books.