Eight mob members arrested for extortion dating back 30 years

The moral of this tale is: do not run up a debt with the Gambino family in New York because they never forget. Eight people in Milan, Matera, Trapani and New York were this week arrested in connection with the attempted extortion of Matera, Italy-based business man Luciano Marsilio.

Thirty years ago, back in the 1980s, Marsilio had gone looking for financial help from his brother’s brother-in-law in the wake of a business collapse. The brother-in-law, Giovanni Grillo, successfully put him in contact with mobsters on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Gambino family, thus enabling Marsilio to pay off his debts.

The Matera business man, who now runs an electricity company called Sudelettra SRL, was surprised when last year somebody called Francesco Palmeri turned up at his offices, having travelled from New York on behalf of the Gambino family and looking for the “loan” to be repaid to the tune of €1 million. Marsilio was certain that he had long ago paid off his debt to the mob.

Palmeri was emphatic however. When he was unable to get a face-to-face meeting with Marsilio, he told the business man’s secretary to tell her boss that he had “a message from America … he is going to understand.”

In other messages to Marsilio, he told the business man that if he paid off the debt, “he wouldn’t have any more problems” and “we will be ready to help you out in any way we can”.

In the end, in a handwritten letter, Palmeri wrote: “...given that this thing has dragged on for almost 30 years, don’t make us wait any longer.”

At one point, the exasperated Palmeri, who had found it difficult to even find his way to the town of Matera deep in the heart of Basilicata in the south of Italy, told Marsilio that a certain Salvatore Farina was also keen to see the debt repaid. If you do not know who Farina is, added Palmeri, look him up on Google.

In so doing, it would seem that Palmeri wanted to make it clear that he was speaking not only on behalf of the Gambino family but also the New York based Bonanno family, to which Farina was linked.

Palmeri proposed that Marsilio would pay off his debt in 10 monthly payments of €100,000 euro each. By way of response, the business man reported the whole thing to the Matera police, thus initiating an investigation which concluded with this week’s arrests.

Among those picked up were Giovanni “Johnny” Grillo, arrested at Milan’s Malpensa airport, just before he got onto a flight to New York, travelling with a one-way ticket.

The debt collector, Francesco Palmeri, was also arrested in a spectacular operation which saw his Brooklyn flat raided by more than 30 FBI agents and Italian police whilst Salvatore Farina was arrested in Trapani, Sicily.

Italy has now lodged a formal extradition request for Palmeri, known as “Ciccio l’americano”, or the chubby American. Of Italian origin, Sicily born Palmeri, who became a naturalised US citizen last May, is wanted in Italy for the crimes of “formal complicity, extortion and robbery.”

Revealing details of the joint US-Italian police operation, senior mafia investigators in Potenza, southern Italy this week said that the investigation provided further proof of "the existence of a consolidated criminal axis between US and Italian criminal organisations".