All Blog Posts Tagged 'Naples' (37)

By David Amoruso

“I’m not crazy. Some of my relatives have been in a lunatic asylum, but I haven’t.” – Camorra boss Michele Zaza

Gangsters like Michele Zaza don’t come around often. Nicknamed “‘O Pazzo” or “The Madman,” he was known as much for talking candidly with the media as for his cunning and…

By Thom L. Jones

In the only borough of New York to begin with the indefinite article, it was not unusual at end of day to watch “fathers trundling home with a monumental sadness on their shoulders”. * It was a hard place to live for the working man and his family. A good place for organized crime.

Frank Scalice lived at 211 Kirby…

By David Amoruso

Police in Italy scored a nice bonus this week when they busted a Neapolitan Camorra clan and recovered two stolen paintings from Vincent van Gogh worth $100 million in the process. The paintings of the Dutch master had been stolen in Amsterdam in 2002 and were missing ever since. Beside the painting, authorities seized…

By David Amoruso

Mike Pizzi is a prime example of what you can achieve with hard work and dedication. Starting out on the streets of New York, lacking a formal education, Pizzi went on to join the Marines as a teenager followed by a long and distinguished career as a U.S. Marshal. Now, he sits down with Gangsters Inc. to discuss his days…

By Thom L. Jones

When you mention Rao’s to someone, you can see their eyes light up. Probably they’ve never been there-you can’t get in the place-but they’ve heard about it: the location, the ambience, the mystique, all those stories. You can only image what it’s like. And then one night, you get lucky. You get in and find out…

By David Amoruso

The Neapolitan Camorra still possesses a stolen Rembrandt painting, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported today. The daily paper talked to looted art hunter Arthur Brand and private detective Sander van Betten, both men claim the missing Rembrandt piece “remains hidden at one of the many hundreds of secret stash houses…

By David Amoruso

How much money does the Italian Mafia make? How many billions of dollars go up the chain through the organizations of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, Campania’s Camorra, and Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta? Criminology professor Francesco Calderoni did the math and came up with some very interesting numbers, numbers that many deem the most…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

It was to be the perfect summer holiday. A group of tourists doled out some cash and rented a beautiful villa in the charming village of Ischia in the picturesque Bay of Naples. As they enjoyed their life of leisure and luxury in the sun they were shocked to find police at their door, telling them to leave…

By David Amoruso

Police in Naples are dealing blow after blow to the region’s Camorra clans. Last week they arrested boss Domenico Ferrara (photo above) and several of his lieutenants, while today, Carabinieri arrested 21 people and seized 35 kilograms of cocaine and 2 kilos of hashish. Police said the cocaine would have netted €2 million euros if…

By David Amoruso

Italian police raided a cocaine refining laboratory in a town south of Naples today, arresting five people including two members of the Camorra and three Colombian nationals. They found 7 kilos of cocaine paste and 20 liters of a coke-based…

By David Amoruso

We can go ahead and just call the Camorra by its Roberto Saviano-given nickname: Gomorrah. The Mafia group has turned the city of Naples into a blood-soaked battlefield littered with corpses and addicts as a drug war is raging between various…

By David Amoruso

Italian police arrested several high-ranking members of the Camorra yesterday. In separate raids spread out across Italy, agents busted fugitive boss Alessandro Giannelli, who is held responsible for a drug war that is raging through Naples, and the financial arm of the Moccia clan.

Giannelli’s (above, right) arrest comes at a…

By David Amoruso

Police in Italy captured fugitive Camorra mob boss Pasquale “Lino” Sibillo, yesterday. He had been wanted since June after evading his arrest on charges of murder, drug trafficking, and Mafia association. Authorities claim he is one of the men behind a violent gang war bloodying the streets of Naples.

24-year-old Sibillo was…

By David Amoruso

Francisco de Castro Visconti seemed like the perfect example of an upstanding hardworking citizen. A resident of the tropical city of Recife on the north-eastern coast of Brazil, he ran a nightclub and food import business and was happily married with two beautiful kids.

Yet, he never really existed. Francisco de Castro Visconti was…

By David Amoruso

Davide Vadacca is considered a rising star within Sacra Corona Unita, Italy’s fourth largest criminal group. At the young age of 32 he is one of the organization’s leaders in the city of Lecce. Authorities say he is also the man behind a violent war that is terrorizing the honest, hardworking people of the Italian city.…

By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto



Italian organized crime, divided in Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita, is a rich and powerful criminal enterprise…

By David Amoruso

Antonio Madafferi, an honest and successful businessman or senior leader of the ‘Ndrangheta crime clan in Melbourne, Australia? It depends on who you ask, but police are quite certain that Madafferi runs one of the country’s most powerful criminal organizations, one that moves record-breaking amounts of drugs and has connections…

By David Amoruso

The Feast of San Gennaro has long been associated with the Italian-American Mafia. Ever since they became powerful enough, mobsters have been extorting the feast for all it was worth. After several successful prosecutions, authorities claimed the feast was free from criminal influence and more money would end up with…

By David Amoruso

As a fugitive you have to be creative to remain a free man. Even when that means dressing up as a woman every now and then. Just ask 42-year-old Camorra boss Aldo Gionta.

This past Saturday, Gionta was arrested by plain clothes policemen at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo as he tried to board a ferry for Malta using false papers. Agents…