Mafia News

Grizzled hair, a neat moustache, and elegantly dressed. A bottle of French champagne on the table and another of fine French cognac nearby. Pasquale Condello - one of Italy’s most wanted fugitives from justice, and one of the reputed masterminds of the Calabrian mafia, or ‘Ndrangheta - put up no resistance when a crack five-man Carabinieri police team burst into an anonymous looking apartment just after sunset on Monday on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria. The 57-year-old was quickly handcuffed and although he had a gun, he declined to use it. Continue Reading »

Picture made available by Italian Police 19 Feb. 2008, showing Pasquale Condello captured in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy, Monday night

Italian police have arrested the leader of the Calabrian mafia, which has parlayed drug trafficking to become more powerful than the more famous Sicilian mob. Clan feuds of the powerful ‘Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate have bloodied the southern Italian region for years. Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome. Continue Reading »

Pasquale Condello was known in the Calabrian Mafia as the Supreme One

Italy is today celebrating the arrest of a top Mafia boss in the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafa, the latest coup in its crackdown on organised crime and Mafia Godfathers.

Pasquale Condello, 57, known to fellow members of the ‘Ndrangheta as ‘The Supreme One, was arrested at an apartment in Reggio Calabria after nearly two decades on the run. Police said he offered no resistance and was taken by surprise. Although there were weapons on the premises he made no move to use them, nor did his son-in-law and nephew, who were with him and are also being interrogated. Continue Reading »

Pasquale Condello is led away by Italian police. Photograph: Antonio Taccone

A mafia crime boss has been captured in southern Italy after 20 years on the run, police said today.

Pasquale Condello, a syndicate head known to associates as “the supreme one”, was arrested in the centre of the regional capital Reggio Calabria. Continue Reading »

“Jackie the Nose” D’Amico at court (left) and the head of the Gambino family, “Little Nick” Corozzo, being escorted from FBI headquarters in 1996.

IT’S too bad for Joey Vallaro that so many people want him killed. Otherwise he could make a killing himself on the speakers’ circuit with his story of how even in adversity there is opportunity.

In Vallaro’s case it would be about how he turned a jail stretch for extortion into a career as a Staten Island trucking magnate.

Always a step ahead, so far at least, Vallaro is the Mafia “rat” at the centre of a 170-page indictment against 62 mobsters and crooks, including the bosses of New York’s Gambino family, which resulted in 57 arrests last week. It was a crippling blow to one of the city’s notorious Five Families. Continue Reading »

MONTREAL - Saputo Inc. (TSX:SAP) shares are down by more than five per cent on the Toronto Stock Exchange today after published reports of allegations linking the company founder to the Italian Mafia. Continue Reading »

ROME — Michele Greco, dubbed the “pope” of the Sicilian Mafia, died on Wednesday in a Rome hospital aged 83 after serving 22 years behind bars, the ANSA news agency reported.

Greco was serving multiple life sentences in a Rome prison for a number of murders including those of the Palermo police chief, Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, in 1982, and anti-Mafia judge Rocco Chinnici the following year.

The historic Mafia figure had been hospitalized a few weeks ago for an unspecified illness, ANSA said. Continue Reading »

Palermo - Two brothers were killed this morning just after seven in Partinico, 35km from Palermo in what appears a mafia attack. Continue Reading »

Maybe the Mafia needs a new business model. The old one hasn’t been working well of late. That seems a reasonable surmise after the mass arrests that had a huge chunk of the Gambino crime family — pardon us, a huge alleged chunk of the Gambino crime family — parading around in manacles the other day. Continue Reading »

Cosa Nostra from Sicily and their New York cousins in organised crime were seriously hit by combined US-Italian police operations last week. But analysts and insiders questioned whether the media had themselves been the victims of an overhyped blitz.

In Rome, police officials and prosecutors from both sides of the Atlantic staged a well-rehearsed press conference close to Thursday evening deadlines. Comparisons were made with the two big transatlantic anti-Mafia operations of the 1980s, Pizza Connection and Iron Tower. Continue Reading »