Tag Archives: italian mafia news

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MAFIA MADNESS: 400,000 BOTTLES OF ITALIAN SPARKLING WINE DUMPED

Produced by / @nickolaushines
Updated on December 12, 2016.

Some 400,000 bottles worth of sparkling Italian wine will never see the bottle this year. An unidentified crew of miscreants with a mysterious motive snuck onto the grounds of the historic Italian winery Conte Vistarino and emptied steel tanks filled with Riesling, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, and other white wines from the 2016 harvest. The staff came to work the morning after the act of vandalism to find $530,000 worth of grape juice and skins on the floor.

The perpetrators didn’t damage any other equipment or steal anything from the winery though, which leaves some to speculate that this act was committed out of spite, The Telegraph writes.

“If you have no idea why, you don’t sleep at night,” Ottavia Giorgi di Vistarino, the countess who manages the winery, told The Telegraph. “The team is shaken, but we won’t let it stop us. We’ll just have to roll up our sleeves and get back to work.”

Italian wine producers, not just Conte Vistarino, have been having a rough couple of years. Mafia members have infiltrated parts of the wine business and are bringing a mafia sensibility to the wine business, a 60 Minutes piece revealed in early 2016. Mafia-tainted olive oil, wine, and cheese — all of which fall under the term “Agromafia,” 60 Minutes reports — is a $16 billion-a-year business. In terms of wine, the Agromafia is notorious for mixing a lesser quality wine with a famous brand and selling it as the famous brand.

Read Full – http://vinepair.com/booze-news/italian-wine-drained/

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Italy police nab mafia fugitive known as ‘The Dancer’

One of the most wanted fugitive bosses of the notorious Calabrian mafia was arrested on Thursday in what the government hailed as a “beautiful” victory for Italy’s fight against organized crime.

Marcello Pesce, the leader of one of the most powerful clans in the ‘Ndrangheta syndicate that controls much of Europe’s cocaine trade, was arrested in a flat in his home town of Rosarno in Calabria in Italy’s deep south.

Nicknamed “The Dancer”, Pesce, 52, was described by prosectuor Gaetano Paci as an intelligent, educated man. Books found in his residence included works by French writers Marcel Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre.

“Today is a beautiful day for Italy: Marcello Pesce, one of the most dangerous mafia figures still at large was brought to justice,” Interior Minister Angelino Alfano posted on Twitter.

Authorities accuse Pesce of being the ruthless head of a family-based clan that controls drug trafficking through the port of Gioia Tauro and also being behind the exploitation of migrant workers employed illegally in the local orange groves.

Former allies have testified to him ordering several killings, including one of an associate who had refused to kill a man blamed for a car accident in which Pesce’s wife died.

Police have been hunting him since 2010, when he was convicted, in his absence, of mafia association and sentenced to 15 years in prison, later raised to 16 years on appeal. Authorities had feared he had fled overseas.

Notoriously ruthless, the ‘Ndrangheta has surpassed Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Naples-based Camorra to become Italy’s most powerful criminal organisation thanks to its pivotal role in smuggling cocaine from South America into Europe via north Africa and southern Italy.

The clan-based syndicate has links with Colombian producer cartels, Mexican crime gangs and mafia families in New York and other parts of North America, according to police.

It remains anchored in the rural, mountainous and under-developed “toe” of Italy’s boot but has also bought up legitimate businesses across the country to launder its illicit profits.

The name ‘Ndrangheta comes from the Greek for courage or loyalty and the organization’s secretive culture and brutal enforcement of codes of silence have made it very difficult to penetrate, although authorities claim significant progress in the last two years.

In one notorious 2013 incident an internal feud was settled by a hitman being fed alive to pigs that had been deliberately starved.

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

THE BLACK AXE: Italy faces chilling new organised crime group MORE RUTHLESS than the mafia

ITALY is facing a terrifying new organised crime threat from gangsters who are even more merciless than the homegrown mafia.

By SIMON OSBORNE

The Black Axe – a Nigerian criminal network that rules by fear – is involved in drug dealing, prostitution and the fraudulent transfer of money between Europe and Nigeria.

And the ruthless organisation is now working alongside the Sicilian mafia – the notorious and powerful Cosa Nostra – after striking a deal with underworld bosses in the island’s capital Palermo and buying the rights to operate in designated areas.

Deputy prosecutor Leonardo Agueci said: “Cosa Nostra tolerates the Nigerian mafia in Palermo. Cosa Nostra allowed the Nigerians to organise a subordinate structure they were tolerated as long as they didn’t come outside their perimeter.”

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Full Article – http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/734772/Black-Axe-Mafia-Cosa-Nostra-Sicily-Palermo-Italy-Nigeria-Lagos

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Italian Newspaper Claims Mafia Is Trading Weapons with ISIS for Stolen Libyan Artifacts

The Italian newspaper La Stampa claims the Camorra and ‘Ndràngheta mafia groups in southern Italy are giving weapons to the terrorist organization ISIS in exchange for rare cultural artifacts stolen from Libya, writes Hannah McGivern of the Art Newspaper.

The weapons are being smuggled into Italy from Ukraine and Moldova by Russian criminals. The artifacts––taken from Sabratha, Cyrene, and Leptis Magna in Libya, all UNESCO World Heritage Sites—are being shipped from the Libyan city Sirte, a former ISIS presidio, to Gioia Tauro in Calabria, a port that ‘Ndràngheta members have used for pumping cocaine into Europe.

La Stampa journalist Domenico Quirico posed as an antiquities dealer to infiltrate ‘Ndràngheta-controlled trade around Naples. He was offered a carved head from what seemed to be a second-century Roman statue for nearly $66,000 and saw pictures of a Greek god figure available for about $1.1 million. Objects from Italian necropolises were also being sold. The clientele for the mafia groups appear to be located in China, Japan, Russia, and the UAE.

Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, said in a recent interview, “The criminal turnover of the so-called Islamic state comes from a series of factors, including the sale of works of art that have escaped the iconoclastic fury of the militants.” But Syria’s antiquities chief, Maamoun Abdulkarim, told the Art Newspaper that seventy percent of the artifacts taken from anti-smuggling operations in Lebanon and Syria have proven to be inauthentic.

From – http://artforum.com/news/id=64056

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

F.B.I. REPORT ON MAFIA DECLINE CAUSED BY GROUP TEXT AND E-MAIL CHAINS

By James Folta , AUGUST 18, 2016

INTERNAL/CLASSIFIED

After extensive investigation, our specialized team, the F.B.I. New-Media Task Force, has determined that organized-crime syndicates are being increasingly hampered by an inability to communicate effectively through text messages and e-mails. Agents have found that the Mafia and other large criminal groups are having difficulty planning crimes as a result of overly long strings of messages that are derailed by unrelated jokes and gifs. Our investigators are pleased to report that this pattern has led to a decrease in crime and an increase in criminal organizations’ cellular overage charges.

The bulk of this investigation involved the interception and analysis of Mafia members’ text messages. It was observed that poor texting habits led to many issues. For instance, unrecognized abbreviations often had to be explained (LOL = Lots of Larceny, CSP = Cement Shoes Please, BHK = Break His Knees, etc.). Mobsters who own different brands of phones were inadvertently left out of group texts, and as a result crimes were understaffed and failed. Winking emojis that were meant to subtly imply something illegal were often interpreted as flirtatious, and vice versa.

Combing through Mafia conversations has revealed an organization that is overly chatty, unable to make basic criminal decisions in fewer than fifty logistical messages. Consider this transcript from a group text chain labelled “Legitimate Businessmen”:

Joey Three Snaps: did you get it?
Hambone Harry: yah, where can I can hand it off?
Joey Three Snaps: Tito’s?
Hambone Harry: eh I don’t feel like that, had mexican last night
Gus Gus: we don’t have to eat for this meeting
Joey Three Snaps: wat do you feel like?
Hambone Harry: not Tito’s
Gus Gus: guys what about just Starbucks
Joey Three Snaps: nah I need to eat
Gus Gus: they have muffins n stuff
Hambone Harry: guys come on, pick something
Gus Gus: sidebar: where’s a good place to start with don delillo?

This particular text conversation continues for another sixty-four minutes until its participants decide to abandon the plan altogether, and to start with “White Noise.” We believe that, in this instance, inept texting combined with numerous long-winded tangents about what constitutes a “low-key date spot” prevented or delayed a serious crime.

Full Article – http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/f-b-i-report-on-mafia-decline-caused-by-group-text-and-e-mail-chains