February 19th
This story gives a new meaning to "sleeping with the fishes", something most people thought was only a quote from The Godfather. Members of the Gambino and Bonanno families have been arrested in connection with an Italian Mafia and a very creative way to smuggle drugs. The cocaine was transported inside of frozen fish, and an undercover agent acted as a buyer and an associate, so he had recorded conversations of the plan. Read the article below for more details...
The cocaine would sleep with the fishes.
The feds have broken up the marriage of a
dreaded Italian crime syndicate and the U.S. Gambino crime family that schemed
to smuggle cocaine stashed inside frozen fish across the Atlantic Ocean.
Eight reputed mobsters with ties to the Gambino
and Bonanno crime families were arrested early Tuesday in New York by the FBI,
while in a coordinated raid in Italy police rounded up 17 members of the
Calabria-based ’Ndrangheta crime organization.
“We feel we have put an end to ’Ndrangheta’s
attempt to gain a foothold in the New York area,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney
Loretta Lynch.
Dominic Ali, 55, was busted as part of a drug
trafficking investigation involving the ‘Ndrangheta syndicate in Italy.
Officials described Gambino associate Franco
Lupoi, 44, as the linchpin of the unholy alliance with ’Ndrangheta through his
father-in-law, Nicola Antonio Simonetta, and a cousin, Francesco Ursino. Both
are members of the group that in recent years has eclipsed the Sicilian Mafia
and Neapolitan Camorra in influence and wealth.
Simonetta and Ursino were among those busted in
Italy.
Lupoi, a co-owner of the Royal Crown Bakery in
Bensonhurst, hatched a global drug-trafficking scheme with Alexander Chan, 46,
and Jose Alfredo (Freddy) Garcia, 47, that originated in Brooklyn and stretched
its tentacles to South America and the boot of Italy, according to court
papers.
JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW
YORK DAILY NEWS
An alleged member of the New York Mafia is
walked out of a federal building on Tuesday to be arraigned in Brooklyn Federal
Court.
During a two-year joint investigation by the FBI
and Italian police, Lupoi proposed to an undercover agent that he had assembled
an ethnically diverse crew — “a Chinese guy, a Greek guy and a Mexican with the
cartels” — put together to ship cocaine hidden inside frozen fish from Guyana
to Calabria.
