Pino Scaduto, head of the Bagheria syndicate in Sicily, arrested after he allegedly asked his son to carry out killing
A Sicilian mafia boss who ordered the assassination of his daughter from behind bars because she was in love with a policeman has been arrested – after his son refused to carry out the hit.
Godfather Pino Scaduto began blaming his earlier arrest and conviction on his daughter’s burgeoning relationship with a senior Italian policeman.
The wife of a mob-connected Queens restaurant owner who trafficked drugs admitted on Monday to pushing the narcotics through the eatery’s basement.
Eleonora Gigliotti pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court to the top charge of conspiracy to import cocaine.
She faces a minimum mandatory sentence of five years in prison and also agreed to pay a $1.625 million forfeiture judgement.
Judge Raymond Dearie could sentence Gigliotti to the maximum of 171/2 years behind bars.
Gigliotti, 56, was slated to go to trial at the end of March for smuggling more than 110 pounds of cocaine from Costa Rica in shipments of cassava to her family’s restaurant, Cucino a Modo Mio, in Corona.
If Gigliotti had been convicted at trial, she could have faced life in prison, authorities said.
The Gigliotti family allegedly has ties to the Genovese mob family and served as a connection to the ’Ndrangheta crime group in Italy.
Prosecutors said in 2014 that Gigliotti had traveled to Costa Rica with more than $360,000 in cash that she delivered to cocaine dealers.
Gigliotti also agreed to forfeit the property seized, including $124,874 in cash, seven handguns recovered from the business, ammunition, an automated money counter and brass knuckles, according to a law enforcement source.
Her husband, Gregorio, 60, and 36-year-old son, Angelo, were convicted on drug and guns charges after a jury trial last July.
They face mandatory minimums of 15 and 20 years behind bars, respectively.
At the trial, Dearie concluded that lawyers for Gregorio Gigliotti and his son had tried to stack the jury with women by using all their preemptory challenges to exclude men.
After a panel of 10 women and two men was selected, federal prosecutors Margaret Gandy and Keith Edelman complained that the defense had discriminated against men.
Dearie later ruled that after reviewing the transcript of jury selection, he found “a pattern of attempting to exclude men” and was going to restore two men back on the jury.
At the time, defense lawyers Elizabeth Macedonio and Alan Futerfas had insisted that there was no bias against men — explaining that some of the challenges were based on “gut” feelings.
It didn’t work — and jurors found both men guilty on July 22 after deliberating for just three hours.
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.
