They had attempted an extortion of 15 thousand euros against the owners of the company engaged in the construction of the niches in the cemetery of Cassano Jonio.

This is the 31-year-old Alessandro Cerchiara from Cassano , brother-in-law of the 33-year-old Luigi Abbruzzese, the 'Ndrangheta godfather of the "gypsies" captured as a fugitive in August 2018 and who married Cerchiara's sister, and Piergiorgio Siciliano, 40 years old from Amendolara but gravitating in the Cassanese area .

Both names and well-known faces in the local investigative circles, were taken at dawn today in the "kingdom of the gypsies", in the public houses of the Timpone Rosso district in the populous Lauropoli hamlet of Cassano Jonio.

The detectives of the Cassanese Arma conducted the investigations of the case, which lasted less than a month. The attempted extortion, in fact, as documented by the investigations, dates back to last April 28th.

When Cerchiara and Siciliano would have gone to the site of the cemetery, and, speaking with an employee of the company , they would have made explicit their extortion request. The two would have asked the worker to bring the "embassy" to his employers: 15 thousand euros of "protection money" to be paid in two "convenient installments".