Mafia News

A notorious Italian mafioso has fathered a child from behind bars despite being denied private visits from his wife.

Raffaele Cutolo’s daughter was born after he won a legal battle to become a father through artificial insemination. Continue Reading »

NEW YORK — The FBI covertly used mob muscle to help solve the 1964 disappearance of three civil rights volunteers in Mississippi, a gangster’s ex-girlfriend testified Monday, becoming the first witness to repeat in open court a story that has been underworld lore for years. Continue Reading »

Tony Gonzales-Rodriguez Jr.

The person who federal authorities say is the Mexican Mafia’s No. 2 man in the Coachella Valley appeared on drug-trafficking charges in a Riverside federal courtroom Monday after months on the lam. Continue Reading »

FORMER New York mayor and US presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani’s life may have been saved by a single mafia boss who vetoed his assassination.

According to the testimony of an FBI agent, the five heads of the New York mob discussed a possible “hit” on the then-federal prosecutor at a 1986 meeting, the New York Post reported. Continue Reading »

A 57-year-old woman was in jail in Sicily last night accused of handing over her son to the mafia to be murdered. Her daughter was also in custody, accused of the same offence. Police said the mother and sister attended the mobsters’ “summit” at which his fate was planned.

Sebastiano Mazzeo, the 20-year-old son of a Cosa Nostra godfather, disappeared in 1989 after it became known he was cooperating with the authorities. His body has never been found, and according to testimony from mafiosi who turned state’s evidence, it was chopped into bits with a machete. Continue Reading »

$600M global money-laundering ring cracked

Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto

MONTREAL - The long tentacles of the Montreal Mafia can travel well beyond prison walls, say Italian anti-Mafia police who have arrested at least a dozen people in a large-scale money-laundering operation based in Italy and allegedly orchestrated by Vito Rizzuto. Continue Reading »

ROME — Organized crime represents the biggest segment of the Italian economy, accounting for more than $127 billion in receipts, according to a report issued on Monday. Continue Reading »

Italian journalists Lirio Abbate works in his office in Rome October 18, 2007 - REUTERS/Tony Gentile

ROME - Lirio Abbate has an unwelcome distinction among Italian journalists: correspondent in Sicily for the state news agency Ansa and La Stampa newspaper, he has had his own armed police escort for the past six months.

When anti-Mafia investigators using wiretaps heard mobsters discussing how to silence 37-year-old Abbate in revenge for his news reports and book about their illegal activities, police decided to give him and his wife a police escort. Continue Reading »

Are you familiar, as the lawyers say, with a man named Alphonse Persico, known as Allie Boy? How about Nicky Black, Wild Bill, Joe Waverly, Joey Brains and Joe Brewster? Or Lawrence Mazza, James Delmasto, John Pate and Carmine Sessa?

If not, good luck following the blockbuster murder case on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court before a spellbound audience of journalists, promoters, authors, conspiracy theorists, gadflies and some who answer to three or more of those designations. You need a scorecard just to track the players. Continue Reading »

Police in Italy have confirmed that a key witness in a Mafia murder case has committed suicide by hanging himself.

Bruno Piccolo had helped identify the men who are currently on trial for the murder of a politician in 2005. Continue Reading »