(12 Feb 2014) Twenty-four people allegedly belonging to two organised crime families, one based in New York, the other in Italy, have been arrested after a two year investigation with Italian police, the FBI confirmed on Tuesday.
An FBI assistant director said seven people belonged to New York family, and 17 from the Italian syndicate.
It’s alleged reputed mobsters in New York City and Italy joined forces in a failed conspiracy to smuggle large amounts of heroin and cocaine, with one suspect suggesting that the drugs could be concealed in frozen fish bound for an Italian port, authorities said.
Law enforcement officials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean said the scheme involved Italy’s powerful `Ndrangheta organised crime syndicate and New York’s Gambino organised crime family.
The investigation targeted a new cocaine trafficking route from South America to the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro, Italian anti-Mafia police said.
In exchange, the Italians were allegedly to provide heroin to the American market.
Officials, using wiretaps and an undercover agent who infiltrated the Brooklyn-based mob, said they thwarted the delivery to Italy of about 500 kilograms (1102 pounds) of pure cocaine that was to have been hidden in shipments of canned coconuts, pineapples and frozen fish being shipped from Guyana to Gioia Tauro.
"The Italian organised crime family was trying to get involved in a New York family and at this point the Italian officials came to the New York office and we worked jointly with the Italian national police to prevent this family from getting ahold of New York City," FBI Assistant Director from the New York Field Office George Venizelos said.
The plot unfolded in 2012, when one of the `Ndrangheta suspects visited his son-in-law, Franco Lupoi, in Brooklyn.
The father-in-law claimed he knew a corrupt customs agent in Italy who "would guarantee the safe arrival of container ships containing contraband," court papers filed in New York said.
In a recorded meeting with the undercover agent, Lupoi later explained that he could have cocaine packed into frozen fish, the court papers said.
The papers also accuse Lupoi of travelling to Italy, where he sold the agent more than 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of heroin that he believed the agent planned to smuggle back to the United States for resale, the papers said.
Lupoi, alleged to be a Gambino associate, pleaded not guilty to international heroin conspiracy and other charges on Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn.
He was ordered held without bail.
Reputed `Ndrangheta member Raffaele Valente, an Italian citizen and US legal resident, also pleaded not guilty at the hearing and was jailed.
He was accused of plotting with Lupoi to sell 1 (m) million counterfeit US dollars.
The investigation underscored how `Ndrangheta is spreading its operations beyond Italy’s borders as it consolidates its position as one of the world’s most powerful drug traffickers, officials said.
The allegations laid bare how the `Ndrangheta, based in the southern region of Calabria, is encroaching on territory once occupied by the Sicilian-based Cosa Nostra, since the Gambinos were the Sicilian Mafia’s US Branch.
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