In the estimation of one gangland kingpin, the quality of new underworld recruits is simply “miserable.”
Mafia bosses in Sicily were recently caught on wiretaps moaning about the bottom-dwelling gene pool where wannabe wiseguys were now emerging from.
Triggering their ire was the arrest of nearly 150 alleged gangsters pinched in early morning raids in Sicily that hammered Cosa Nostra hard.
Comparing the new breed unfavourably to Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone in the 1972 blockbuster, The Godfather, one don said the newbies were quick to turn “pentito” or rat the minute they got busted.
“The calibre these days is low, a miserable level,” Giancarlo Romano said in an intercepted conversation.
“If you watch The Godfather, the connections he had … he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level. But us – what can we do? We’re on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it’s others who do it. We used to be No. 1, now it’s others … we’re just gypsies.”
Romano allegedly advised one recruit to go to school to get tight with the scions of Italy’s powerbrokers.
The lightning raids ensnared mobsters wanted for attempted murder, extortion, drug trafficking, arms possession and Mafia association.
Romano would find common cause with Mob bosses in southern Ontario, Chicago and New York about the quality of recruits. Former Gambino crime family underboss Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano likened today’s Mafia to the Lion’s Club in an interview with the Toronto Sun in 2024.
“They don’t even kill anymore,” an exasperated Gravano told the Sun.
But times have gotten tough in the Cosa Nostra’s birthplace with mobsters desperately trying to rebuild their rackets following a series of setbacks.
The crime syndicate is a long way from the 1990s when it obliterated two anti-Mafia judges with car bombs.
Now, Cosa Nostra’s Calabrian rival, ‘Ndrangheta, has stolen the Sicilians’ thunder, raking in billions from trafficking cocaine from South America to the fertile European market.
“The investigations that led to Tuesday’s arrests demonstrate that Cosa Nostra is alive and present and communicates with completely new communication channels. It is doing business and trying to rebuild its army,” Palermo’s chief prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia told reporters.
National anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Melillo added: “The Mafia is trying to build itself back up by forging new links, for instance with the ‘Ndrangheta. Investigations into cocaine trafficking reveal deep connections with the entities that manage international drug routes. Relations with the ‘Ndrangheta are ever closer.”
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As in the days of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has vowed to eliminate the Mob. But the Mafia has “extraordinary resilience” said John Dickie, the author of Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse and Cosa Nostra, A History of the Sicilian Mafia.
“The investigation shows that, as soon as they get a chance, they try to revive the structure of Cosa Nostra – which is amazing given the obstacles they face. The Italians have become fantastic at surveillance,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“Mafia dons have been caught boasting how good their anti-bugging devices were, at the same time that they were being bugged.
“I would say that, in general, Cosa Nostra is in decline. You only have to read the phone taps where the bosses are saying it’s not like it used to be. This is about the fifth time that the bosses have tried to reorganize the cupola since the early 1990s. Every time they have been thwarted. The authorities were on to them.
“These arrests mean that Cosa Nostra has another big task to rebuild, and they show that the state is still stronger than the mafia.”
@HunterTOSun