The purpose of this thread is to discuss the profitability of the various moneymaking schemes that OC groups engage in .

I'll start off by posing a question : Is the market for counterfeit goods in the EU more valuable than that for illegal drugs ? This PDF ( http://www.ocportfolio.eu/_File%20originali/OCP%20Full%20Report.pdf ) states it is ( at least according to estimates ) which seems very strange . After all it's a commonly held view that drug trafficking is the most profitable enterprise that OC groups engage in .

Haven't read the report, nor am I any kind of crime expert.

Knock off high end goods would seem to be highly profitable racket though. Less police interference, lower sentences for those involved...less headaches & violence. The funny thing is that real mccoy and bootleg version of goods are often made in the same plant.

The old Canal Street (Chinatown in NYC) merchants used to make money HAND over fist....from knockoff purses/handbags and watches alone.

OC are middlemen in drug trade in Europe, right? What do they make from a Ki of coke?

@2a

I've read this before.... Actually it's the thing that gives me pause when people automatically rank the average Sicilian family-clan higher than the ones in Naples... Here an excerpt.. ( I'm all about the sources these days...) I can't really explain it fully.....
Matter of fact, fuck it, here's the WHOLE CHAPTER, read for yourself, draw your own conclusions...


“ANGELINA JOLIE

In the days that followed, Xian took me along to his business meetings. He seemed to enjoy my company as he went about his day or ate his lunch. I either talked too much or too little, both of which he liked. I followed how the seeds of money are sown and cultivated, how the economy’s terrain is allowed to lie fallow. We went to Las Vegas, an area to the north of Naples. Las Vegas: that’s what we call it around here, for several reasons. Just like Las Vegas, Nevada, which is built in the middle of the desert, the urban agglomerations here seem to spring up
“out of nothing. And you have to cross a desert of roads to reach the place. Miles of tar, wide thoroughfares that whisk you away from here, propelling you toward the highway, to Rome, straight to the north. Roads built not for cars but for trucks, not to move people but clothes, shoes, purses. As you arrive from Naples, these towns appear out of nowhere, planted in the ground one after another. Lumps of cement. Tangles of streets. A web of roads on which the towns of Casavatore, Caivano, Sant’Antimo, Melito, Arzano, Piscinola, San Pietro a Patierno, Frattamaggiore, Frattaminore, Grumo Nevano, endlessly rotate. Places so indistinguishable they seem to be one giant metropolis, with the streets of one town running into another.
I must have heard the area around Foggia called Califoggia a hundred times, the southern part of Calabria referred to as Calafrica or Saudi Calabria, Sala Consilina Sahara Consilina, or an area of Secondigliano (which means “second mile”) called Terzo Mondo, Third World. But this Las Vegas really is Las Vegas. For years, anyone who wanted to try his hand at business could do it here. Live the dream. Use his severance pay, savings, or a loan “to open a factory.

You’d bet on a company: if you won, you’d reap efficiency, productivity, speed, protection, and cheap labor. You’d win just the way you win by betting on red or black. If you lost, you’d be out of business in a few months. Las Vegas. No regulations, no administrative or economic planning. Shoes, clothes, and accessories were clandestinely forced onto the international market.”


“The towns didn’t boast of this precious production; the more silently, the more secretly the goods were manufactured, the more successful they were. For years this area produced the best in Italian fashion. And thus the best in the world. But they didn’t have entrepreneurs’ clubs or training centers; they had nothing but work, nothing but their sewing machines, small factories, wrapped packages, and shipped goods. Nothing but the endless repetition of production.

Everything else was superfluous. Training took place at the workbench, and a company’s quality was demonstrated by its success. No financing, no projects, no internships. In the marketplace it’s all or nothing. Win or lose. A rise in salaries has meant better houses and fancy cars. Yet this is not wealth that can be considered collective “This is plundered wealth, taken by force from someone else and carried off to your own cave. People came from all over to invest in businesses making shirts, jackets, skirts, blazers, gloves, hats, purses, and wallets for Italian, German, and French companies.

Las Vegas stopped requiring permits, contracts, or proper working conditions in the 1950s, and garages, stairwells, and storerooms were transformed into factories. But lately the Chinese competition has ruined the ones producing midrange-quality merchandise. There’s no more room for workmanship. Either you do the best work the fastest or someone else will figure out how to do average work more quickly. A lot of people found themselves out of work. Factory owners were crushed by debt and usury. Many absconded.....



“But not everyone is underground here. Not everyone has ended up in the quagmire of defeat. At least not yet. Some successful factories are still strong enough to compete with the Chinese because they work for big designer names. By delivering speed and quality—extremely high quality—they still hold the monopoly on beauty for top-level garments.

“Made in Italy” is made here. Caivano, Sant’ Antimo, Arzano, and all across Las Vegas, Campania. “The face of Italy in the world” wears fabric draped over the bare head of the Naples suburbs. The brand names don’t dare risk sending everything East, contracting out to Asia. Factories here are crowded into stairwells, on the ground floors of row houses, in sheds on the outskirts of these outlying towns. Lined up one behind the other, staring at the back of the person in front of them, the workers sew cloth, cut leather, and “assemble shoes.

A garment worker puts in about ten hours a day, bringing home from 500 to 900 euros a month. Overtime usually pays well, as much as 15 euros an hour more than the regular wage. Factories rarely have more than ten employees. There’s almost always a television or radio so the workers can listen to music, maybe even hum along. But during crunch times the only noise is the march of needles.

More than half the employees are women; they’re skilled workers, born staring at a sewing machine. Officially these factories don’t exist, and neither do the employees. If the same work were done legally, prices would go up and there’d be no more market—which means the work would disappear from Italy. The businessmen around here know this logic by heart. There’s usually no rancor or resentment between factory workers and owners; class conflict here is as soft as a soggy cookie. Often the owner is a former worker, and he puts in the same hours as his employees, in the same room, at the same bench. When he makes a mistake, he pays for it out of his own pocket, in mortgages or loans. “His authority is paternalistic. You have to fight for a day off or a few cents’ raise. There’s no contract, no bureaucracy.

It’s all head to head, and any concessions or benefits are individually negotiated. The owner and his family live above the factory. His daughters often babysit his employees’ children, and his mother becomes their de facto grandmother, so that workers’ and owner’s children grow up together. This communal existence acts out the horizontal dream of post-Fordism: workers and managers eat together, socialize, “with each other, and are made to feel they’re all part of the same community.”


“No one acts ashamed here. They know they’re doing top-quality work, and that they’re being paid a pittance. But you can’t have one without the other. You work to get what you need and you do it as best you can, so that no one will find any reason to fire you. No safety net, just cause, sick leave, or vacation days. It’s up to you to negotiate your rights, to plead for time off. But there’s nothing to complain about. Everything is just as it should be. Here there’s only a body, a skill, a machine, and a salary. No one knows the exact number of clandestine workers in these parts, or how many legal employees are forced to sign a monthly pay slip for sums they never receive.



“Xian was to take part in an auction. We went to an elementary-school classroom, but there were no children and no teacher, just sheets of construction paper with big letters tacked to the walls. About twenty company reps were milling around. Xian was the only foreigner. He only greeted two people, and without excessive familiarity. A car pulled into the school courtyard, and three people entered the room: two men and a woman. The woman was wearing a leather skirt and high-heeled patent-leather shoes. Everyone rose to greet her. They took their places and the auction began. One of the men drew three vertical lines on the blackboard and wrote “as the woman dictated. In the first column:
“800”
This was the number of garments to make. The woman listed the types of fabric and the quality of the articles. A businessman from Sant’ Antimo went over to the window, turning his back to the rest of us, and offered his prices and times:
“Forty euros apiece in two months.”
His proposal was written on the board:
“800/40/2”
The other businessmen didn’t look worried. He hadn’t dared enter the realm of the impossible, which evidently was to their liking. But not to the buyers’. So the bidding continued.



“The auctions the big Italian brands hold in this area are strange. No one wins the contract and no one loses. The game consists in entering or not entering the race. Someone throws out an offer, stating his time and price. If his conditions are accepted, he won’t be the only winner, however. His offer is like a head start the others can try to follow. When the brokers accept a bid, the other contractors decide if they want in; whoever agrees gets the fabric. It’s sent directly to the port of Naples, where the contractors pick it up.

But only one of them will be paid: the one who delivers first, and with top-quality merchandise. The other players are free to keep the fabric, but they don’t get a cent. The fashion houses make so much money that material isn’t a loss worth considering. If a contractor takes advantage of the system to have free fabric but repeatedlly “fails to deliver, he’s excluded from future auctions. In this way the brokers are guaranteed speed: if someone falls behind, someone else will take his place. There’s no relief from the rhythms of high fashion.
To the joy of the woman behind the desk, another hand went up. A well-dressed contractor, elegant.
“Twenty euros in twenty-five days.”
In the end the bid was accepted. Nine of the twenty contractors signed on as well. But not Xian. He wouldn’t have been able to coordinate quality and speed in such a short time and at such low prices. When the auction was over, the woman wrote up a list of the contractors’ names and phone numbers and the addresses of their factories. The winner “invited everyone to his house for lunch.

His factory was on the ground floor, he and his wife lived on the second, his son on the third. “I’m applying for a permit to add another floor. My other son is getting married,” he declared proudly. As we climbed the stairs, he continued to tell us about his family, which, like his villa, was under construction.
“Don’t ever put men in charge of the female workers, it only causes problems. I’ve got two sons, and both of them married employees. Put the fags in charge. Make the fags manage the shifts and inspect the work, like in the old days …”
The workers, men and women, came up to toast the new contract. They faced a grueling schedule: first shift from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with an hour’s break to eat, “second shift from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. The women were wearing makeup and earrings, and aprons to protect their clothes from the glue, dust, and machine grease. Like Superman, who takes off his shirt and reveals his blue costume underneath, they were ready to go out to dinner as soon as they removed their aprons.

The men were sloppier, in sweatshirts and work pants. After the toast one of the guests took the owner aside, along with the others who had agreed to the auction price. They weren’t hiding, but simply respecting the ancient custom of not discussing money at table. Xian explained to me in great detail that the guest—the very image of a bank teller—was discussing interest rates. But he was not from a bank. Italian brands pay only when the work is completed. Or rather, only after it has “been accepted.

Everything—salaries, production costs, even shipping—must be paid in advance by the manufacturers, so the clans loan money to the factories in their territories. The Di Lauros in Arzano, the Verdes in Sant’ Antimo, the Cennamos in Crispano, and so on. The Camorra offers low rates, 2 to 4 percent. No one should have an easier time obtaining bank credit than these companies, who produce for the Italian fashion world, for the market of markets. But they’re phantom operations, and bank directors don’t meet with ghosts.

Camorra liquidity is also the only way for factory employees to obtain a mortgage. Thus in towns where more than 40 percent of the residents support themselves by moonlighting, six out of ten families still manage to buy a home. Even the contractors who “don’t satisfy the requirements of the designer labels manage to find a buyer. They sell the garments to the clans to be put on the fake-goods market. All the runway fashions, all the glitz for the most elegant premieres, comes from here. The Las Vegas towns and Casarano, Tricase, Taviano, and Melissano in Capo di Leuca, the lower Salento region, are the principal centers for black-market fashion. It all comes from here, from this hole. All merchandise has obscure origins: such is the law of capitalism. But to observe the hole, to see it in front of you, well, it causes a strange sensation. An anxious heaviness. Like the truth weighing on your stomach.

“One of the winning contractor’s workers was particularly skilled: Pasquale. A lanky figure, tall, slim, and a bit hunchbacked; his frame curved behind his neck onto his shoulders, a bit like a hook. The stylists sent designs directly to him, articles intended for his hands only. His salary didn’t fluctuate, but his tasks varied, and he some how conveyed an air of satisfaction. I liked him immediately, the moment I caught sight of his big nose. Even though he was still young, Pasquale had the face of an old man. A face that was constantly buried in fabric, fingertips that ran along seams. Pasquale was one of the only workers who could buy fabric direct. Some brandname houses even trusted him to order materials directly from China and inspect the quality himself. Which is why he and Xian knew each other. They’d met at the port. One day we all had lunch together there. When we finished “eating, we said goodbye to Pasquale, and Xian and I got in the car and headed toward Vesuvius. Volcanoes are usually depicted in dark colors, but Vesuvius is green; from a distance, it’s a vast mantle of moss. But before we got to the turnoff for the towns around Vesuvius, the car pulled into the courtyard of a building. Pasquale was there waiting for us. I had no idea why. Pasquale got out of his car and climbed straight into the trunk of Xian’s.
“What’s going on? Why’s he getting in the trunk?”
“Don’t worry. Now we’ll go to Terzigno, to the factory.”
A sort of Minotaur figure got in behind the wheel. He’d been in Pasquale’s car and seemed to know exactly what to do “He put the engine in reverse, backed out the gate, and, before pulling out into the street, produced a pistol. A semiautomatic. He racked a round and stuck it between his legs. I didn’t breathe, but the Minotaur, catching sight of me in the rearview mirror, realized I was staring at him anxiously.
“They tried to do us in once.”
“Who?”
I tried to get him to explain it all from the beginning.
“The ones who don’t want the Chinese learning to work in high fashion. The ones who just want fabric from China, nothing else.”
I didn’t understand. I just didn’t understand. Xian intervened, in his usual “soothing way.
“Pasquale’s helping us learn how to make the quality garments they don’t trust us with yet. We’re learning how to make clothes from him.”
After Xian’s explanation, the Minotaur attempted to justify the pistol:
“So … one of them popped up there once, right there, see, in the middle of the piazza, and fired on our car. Hit the motor and windshield wipers. If they’d wanted to, they could’ve bumped us off. But it was just a warning. If they try it again though, this time I’m ready.”
The Minotaur explained that the best technique when driving is to keep the pistol between your thighs. Putting it on the dashboard slows you down—you lose too much “grabbing it. The road to Terzigno is uphill, and I could smell the clutch burning. I was less afraid of a burst of submachine-gun fire than the recoil of the engine, which might make the pistol fire into the driver’s scrotum. We arrived without a hitch. As soon as the car came to a stop, Xian went and opened the trunk. Pasquale got out, looking like a balled-up Kleenex trying to flatten itself out. He came over to me and said:
“It’s the same story every time. Not even a fugitive hides like this … But it’s better they don’t see me in the car, or else …”
He sliced a finger across his neck. The factory was big, but not enormous. Xian had described it to me proudly. It belonged to him, but housed nine microfactories of nine Chinese entrepreneurs. It “was like a chessboard inside: each factory had a square, with its own workers and benches. Xian had given each company the same amount of space as the factories in Las Vegas, and the contracts were auctioned off using the same method. He’d decided not to let children into the work zone and had organized the shifts as in Italian factories. What’s more, when they did work for other companies, they didn’t ask for cash up front. In short, Xian was becoming a serious player in the Italian fashion business.
Chinese factories in China were competing with Chinese factories in Italy. As a result Prato, Rome, and the Chinatowns of half of Italy were suffering terribly; they’d experienced such a quick boom that the collapse felt even more sudden.”


“There was only one way for the Chinese factories in Italy to save themselves: they had to become fashion experts, capable of doing top-quality work. They had to learn from the Italians, from the Las Vegas factory owners, to go from being junk manufacturers to the brands’ trusted suppliers in southern Italy. They had to take the place of the Italian underground factories, appropriate their logic, workspaces, and language. They had to do the same work, but for a little less money and in a little less time.
Pasquale took some fabric out of a suitcase: a dress he was supposed to cut and sew in his factory. He did it here instead, on a table in front of a camera, his image projected onto a sheet hanging behind “him. As he talked, a girl with a microphone translated into Chinese. This was his fifth lesson.
“You must take great care with the seams. The seam has to be light but not nonexistent.”
The Chinese triangle: San Giuseppe Vesuviano, Terzigno, Ottaviano. The hub of the Chinese clothing business. Everything that’s happening in the Chinese communities of Italy happened first in Terzigno. The first production cycles, the first quality manufacturing, as well as the first murders. This is where Wang Dingjm was killed. A forty-year-old immigrant who’d driven down from Rome for a party some other Chinese were throwing. They invited him, then shot him in the head. Wang was a snakehead—a scout- “tied to the criminal cartels in Beijing that organize the clandestine entry of Chinese into Italy. Trafficking in humans, the snakeheads often clash with their clients. They promise a certain quantity and then they don’t deliver. Just as a drug dealer is killed when he keeps back a part of his earnings, a snakehead is killed when he cheats on his goods, on human beings.....



“On TV Angelina Jolie was treading the red carpet at the Oscars, dressed in a gorgeous garment. One of those custom-made outfits that Italian designers fall over each other to offer to the stars. An outfit that Pasquale had made in an underground factory in Arzano. All “All they’d said to him was “This one’s going to America.” Pasquale had worked on hundreds of outfits going to America, but that white suit was something else. He still remembered all the measurements. The cut of the neck, the circumference of the wrists. And the pants. He’d run his hands inside the legs and could still picture the naked body that every tailor forms in his mind—not an erotic figure but one defined by the curves of muscles, the ceramics of bones. A body to dress, a meditation of muscle, bone, and bearing. Pasquale still remembered the day he’d gone to the port to pick up the fabric. They’d commissioned three suits from him, without saying anything else. They knew whom they were for, but no one had told Pasquale.”


“A Berlin newspaper had dedicated six pages to the tailor of Germany’s first woman chancellor, pages that spoke of craftsmanship, imagination, and elegance. Pasquale was filled with rage, a rage that it’s impossible to express. And yet satisfaction is a right, and merit deserves recognition. Deep in his gut he knew he’d done a superb job and he wanted to be able to say so. He knew he deserved something more. But no one had said a word to him. He’d discovered it by accident, by mistake. His rage was an end in itself, justified but pointless. He couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t even whisper as he sat looking at the newspaper the next morning. He “couldn’t say, “I made that suit.” No one would have believed that Angelina Jolie would go to the Academy Awards wearing an outfit made in Arzano, by Pasquale. The best and the worst. Millions of dollars and 600 euros a month. Neither Angelina Jolie nor the designer could have known. When everything possible has been done, when talent, skill, ability, and commitment are fused in a single act, when all this isn’t enough to change anything, then you just want to lie down, stretch out on nothing, in nothing. To vanish slowly, let the minutes wash over you, sink into them as if they were quicksand. To do nothing but breathe. Besides, nothing will change things, not even an outfit for Angelina Jolie at the Oscars.

“THE SYSTEM

The huge international clothing market, the vast archipelago of Italian elegance, is fed by the System. With its companies, men, and products, the System has reached every corner of the globe. System—a term everyone here understands, but that still needs decoding elsewhere, an obscure reference for anyone unfamiliar with the power dynamics of the criminal economy. Camorra is a nonexistent word, a term of contempt used by narcs and judges, journalists and scriptwriters; it’s a generic indication, a scholarly term, relegated to history—a name that makes “Camorristi smile. The word clan members use is System—”I belong to the Secondigliano System”—an eloquent term, a mechanism rather than a structure. The criminal organization coincides directly with the economy, and the dialectic of commerce is the framework of the clans.



The Secondigliano System has gained control of the entire clothing manufacturing chain, and the real production zone and business center is the outskirts of Naples. Everything that is impossible to do elsewhere because of the inflexibility of contracts, laws, and copyrights is feasible here, just north of the city. Structured around the entrepreneurial power of the clans, the area produces astronomical capital, amounts unimaginable for any legal industrial conglomeration. The interrelated “textile, leatherworking, and shoe manufacturing activities set up by the clans produce garments and accessories identical to those of the principal Italian fashion houses.



The workforce in clan operations is highly skilled, with decades of experience under Italy’s and Europe’s most important designers. The same hands that once worked under the table for the big labels now work for the clans. Not only is the workmanship perfect, but the materials are exactly the same, either bought directly on the Chinese market or sent by the designer labels to the underground factories participating in the auctions. Which means that the clothes made by the clans aren’t the typical counterfeit goods, cheap imitations, or copies passed off as the real thing, but rather a sort of true fake. All that’s missing is the final step: the brand name, the official authorization of the motherhouse.


But the clans usurp that authorization without bothering to ask anybody’s permission. Besides, what clients anywhere in the world are really interested in is quality and design. And the clans provide just that—brand as well as quality—so there really is no difference. The Secondigliano clans have acquired entire retail chains, thus spreading their commercial network across the globe and dominating the international clothing market.


They also provide distribution to outlet stores. Products of slightly inferior quality have yet another venue: African street vendors and market stalls. Nothing goes unused. From factory to store, from retailer to distributor, hundreds “of companies and thousands of employees are elbowing each other to get in on the garment business run by the Secondigliano clans.



Everything is coordinated and managed by the Directory. I hear the term constantly—every time bar talk turns to business, or in the usual complaints about not having work: “It’s the Directory that wanted it that way.” “The Directory better get busy and start doing things on a bigger scale.” They sound like snippets of conversation in postrevolutionary France, when the collective governing body was Napoléon’s Directoire. “Directory” is the name the magistrates at the Naples DDA—the District Anti-Mafia Directorate—gave to the economic, financial, and operative structure of a group of businessmen “and Camorra family bosses in north Naples. A structure with a purely economic role. The Directory, and not the hit men or firing squads, represents the organization’s real power.



The clans affiliated with the Secondigliano Alliance—the Licciardi, Contini, Mallardo, Lo Russo, Bocchetti, Stabile, Prestieri, and Bosti families, as well as the more autonomous Sarno and Di Lauro families—make up the Directory, whose territory includes Secondigliano, Scampia, Piscinola, Chiaiano, Miano, San Pietro a Patierno, as well as Giugliano and Ponticelli. As the Directory’s federal structure offered greater autonomy to the clans, the more organic structure of the Alliance ultimately crumbled. The Directory’s production board included businessmen, “from Casoria, Arzano, and Melito, who ran companies such as Valent, Vip Moda, Vocos, and Vitec, makers of imitation Valentino, Ferré, Versace, and Armani sold all over the world. A 2004 inquiry, coordinated by Naples DDA prosecutor Filippo Beatrice, uncovered the Camorra’s vast economic empire. It all started with a small detail, one of those little things that could have passed unnoticed: a clothing store in Chemnitz, Germany, hired a Secondigliano boss. A rather unusual choice.

It turned out he actually owned the store, which was registered under a false name. From this lead, followed by wiretaps and state witnesses, the Naples DDA reconstructed each link in the Secondigliano clans’ production and commercial chain.


They set up shop everywhere. In Germany “they had stores and warehouses in Hamburg, Dortmund, and Frankfurt, and in Berlin there were two Laudano shops. In Spain they were in Barcelona and Madrid; in Brussels; in Vienna; and in Portugal in Oporto and Boavista. They had a jacket shop in London and stores in Dublin, Amsterdam, Finland, Denmark, Sarajevo, and Belgrade.

The Secondigliano clans also crossed the Atlantic, investing in Canada, the United States, even in South America. The American network was immense; millions of jeans were sold in shops in New York, Miami Beach, New Jersey, and Chicago, and they virtually monopolized the market in Florida.

American retailers and shopping-center owners wanted to deal exclusively with Secondigliano brokers; haute couture garments from big-name designers at at rea“reasonable prices meant that crowds of customers would flock to their shopping centers and malls.

The names on the labels were perfect. A matrix for printing Versace’s signature Medusa’s head was found in a lab on the outskirts of Naples. In Secondigliano word spread that the American market was dominated by Directory clothes, making it easier for young people eager to go to America and become salespeople. They were inspired by the success of Vip Moda, whose jeans filled Texas stores, where they were passed off as Valentino.



Business spread to the southern hemisphere as well. A boutique in Five Dock, New South Wales, became one of Australia’s hottest addresses for elegant clothing, and there were also shops and “warehouses in Sydney. The Secondigliano clans dominated the clothing market in Brazil—in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. They had plans to open a store for American and European tourists in Cuba, and they’d been investing in Saudi Arabia and North Africa for a while.


The distribution mechanism the Directory had put in place was based on warehouses—that’s how they’re referred to in the wiretappings—veritable clearing stations for people and merchandise, depots for every kind of clothing. The warehouses were the center of a commercial hub, the place where agents picked up the merchandise to be distributed to the clans’ stores or other retailers. It was an old concept, that of the magliari, the Neapolitan traveling salesmen; after the Second World War they invaded half the planet, eating up the “miles lugging their bags stuffed with socks, shirts, and jackets. Applying their age-old mercantile experience on a larger scale, the magliari became full-fledged commercial agents who could sell anywhere and everywhere, from neighborhood markets to malls, from parking lots to gas stations.

The best of them made a qualitative leap, selling large lots of clothing directly to retailers. According to investigations, some businessmen organized the distribution of fakes, offering logistical support to the sales reps, the magliari. They paid travel and hotel expenses in advance, provided vans and cars, and guaranteed legal assistance in the case of arrest or confiscation of merchandise. And of course they pocketed the earnings. A business with an annual turnover of about 300 million euros per family.



“The Italian labels started to protest against the Secondigliano cartels’ huge fake market only after the DDA uncovered the entire operation. Before that, they had no plans for a negative publicity campaign, never filed charges, or divulged to the press the harmful workings of the illegal production.

It is difficult to comprehend why the brands never took a stand against the clans, but there are probably many reasons. Denouncing them would have meant forgoing once and for all their cheap labor sources in Campania and Puglia. The clans would have closed down access to the clothing factories around Naples and hindered relations with those in Eastern Europe and Asia.

And given the vast number of shopping “centers operated directly by the clans, denouncing them would have jeopardized thousands of retail sales contacts. In many places the families handle transportation and agents, so fingering them would have meant a sudden rise in distribution costs.

Besides, the clans weren’t ruining the brands’ image, but simply taking advantage of their advertising and symbolic charisma. The garments they turned out were not inferior and didn’t disgrace the brands’ quality or design image. Not only did the clans not create any symbolic competition with the designer labels, they actually helped promote products whose market price made them prohibitive to the general public.

In short, the clans were promoting the brand. If hardly anyone wears a label’s clothes, if they’re seen only on live mannequins “on the runway, the market slowly dies and the prestige of the name declines. What’s more, the Neapolitan factories produced counterfeit garments in sizes that the designer labels, for the sake of their image, do not make. But the clans certainly weren’t going to trouble themselves about image when there was a profit to be made.

Through the true fake business and income from drug trafficking, the Secondigliano clans acquired stores and shopping centers where genuine articles were increasingly mixed in with the fakes, thus erasing any distinction. In a way the System sustained the legal fashion empire in a moment of crisis; by taking advantage of sharply rising prices, it continued to promote Italian-made goods throughout the world, earning exponential sums.”

“The Secondigliano clans realized that their vast international distribution and sales network was their greatest asset, even stronger than drug trafficking. Narcotics and clothing often moved along the same routes.

The System’s entrepreneurial energies were also invested in technology, however. Investigations in 2004 revealed that the clans use their commercial networks to import Chinese high-tech products for European distribution. Europe had the form—the brand, the fame, and the advertising—and China the content—the actual product, cheap labor, and inexpensive materials.

The System brought the two together, winning out all around. Aware that the economy was on the brink, the clans targeted Chinese industrial zones already manufacturing for big “Western companies; in this they followed the pattern of businesses that first invested in southern Italy’s urban sprawl and then gradually shifted to China.

They got the idea of ordering batches of high-tech products to resell on the European market, obviously with a fake brand name that would increase desirability. But they were cautious; as with a batch of cocaine, they first tested the quality of the products the Chinese factories sold them.

After confirming their market validity, they launched one of the most prosperous intercontinental dealings in criminal history. Digital cameras, video cameras, and power tools: drills, grinders, pneumatic hammers, planes, and sanders, all marketed as Bosch, Hammer, or Hilti. When the Secondigliano boss Paolo Di Lauro started doing business with China, he was “ten years ahead of the initiative of Confindustria, the Italian Manufacturers’ Association, to improve business ties with Asia.

The Di Lauro clan sold thousands of Canons and Hitachis on the East European market. Thanks to Camorra imports, items that were once the prerogative of the upper-middle class were now accessible to a broader public. To guarantee a stronger entry into the market, the clans offered practically the identical product, slapping the brand name on at the end.
The Di Lauro and Contini clans’ investment in China, which was the focus of a 2004 Naples DDA inquiry, demonstrates the entrepreneurial farsightedness of the bosses. The era of big business was finished and the criminal conglomerates had
“crumbled as a result.

The Nuova Camorra Organizzata or New Organized Camorra, established by Raffaele Cutolo in the 1980s, had been a sort of enormous company, a centralized conglomerate. It was followed by La Nuova Famiglia or New Family, which Carmine Alfieri and Antonio Bardellino operated as a federal structure of economically autonomous families united by common interests. But this too proved unwieldy.


The flexibility of today’s economy has permitted small groups of manager bosses operating in hundreds of enterprises in well-defined sectors to control the social and financial arenas. There is now a horizontal structure—much more flexible than Cosa Nostra, and much more permeable to new alliances than the Calabrians.

This I believe explains a lot why Canada looks how it does right now.....and the Calabrians, and just all the clans that move PRODUCTS in general.....

“Investigations conducted by the Naples anti-Mafia prosecutor reveal that the Camorra’s flexible, federalist structure has completely transformed the fabric of the “families: instead of diplomatic alliances and stable pacts, clans now operate more like business committees.



(THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, ITS WHY ITS MISLEADING TO COUNT THE NUMBER OF MADE GUYS IN DETERMINING THE STRENGTH OF A CLAN...)





The Camorra’s flexibility reflects its need to move capital, set up and liquidate companies, circulate money, and invest quickly in real estate without geographical restrictions or heavy dependence on political mediation. The clans no longer need to organize in large bodies. These days a group of people can decide to band together, rob, smash store windows, and steal without risking being killed or taken over by the clan. The gangs rampaging around Naples are not composed exclusively of individuals who commit crimes to pad their wallets, buy fancy cars, or live in luxury. They know that by joining forces and increasing the degree and amount of violence, they can often improve their “economic capacity, becoming interlocutors for the clans. The Camorra is made up of groups that suck like voracious lice, hindering all economic development, and others that operate as instant innovators “pushing their businesses to new heights of development and trade”.


“In the urban outskirts the System has expanded, rising like bread dough. Local and regional governments thought they could oppose the System by not doing business with the clans. But that wasn’t enough. They underrated the power of the families and neglected the phenomenon, considering it an aspect of urban blight. As a result Campania is now the Italian region with the highest number of cities under observation for Camorra infiltration. A total of seventy-one municipal administrations have been dissolved since 1991. An extraordinary number, far surpassing that in the other regions of Italy: forty-four in Sicily, thirty-four in Calabria, seven in Puglia. In the province of Naples alone, town councils have been dissolved in Pozzuoli, Quarto, Marano, Melito, Portici, Ottaviano, San Giuseppe “Vesuviano, San Gennaro Vesuviano, Terzigno, Calandrino, Sant’ Antimo, Tufino, Crispano, Casamarciano, Nola, Liveri, Boscoreale, Poggiomarino, Pompei, Ercolano, Pimonte, Casola di Napoli, Sant’ Antonio Abate, Santa Maria la Carità, Torre Annunziata, Torre del Greco, Volla, Brusciano, Acerra, Casoria, Pomigliano d’ Arco, and Frattamaggiore. Only nine of the ninety-two municipalities in the province of Naples have never had external commissioners, inquiries, or monitoring. Clan businesses have determined zoning regulations, infiltrated local sanitation services, purchased land immediately prior to its being zoned for building and then subcontracted the construction of shopping centers, and imposed patron saints’ days festivities that depend on their multiservice companies “companies, from catering to cleaning, from transportation to trash collection.”


“Never in the economy of a region has there been such a widespread, crushing criminal presence as in Campania in the last ten years. Unlike the Sicilian Mafia groups, the Camorra clans don’t need politicians; it’s the politicians who need the System. In Campania a deliberate strategy leaves the political structures that are most visible, those under media scrutiny, formally immune to connivances and contiguities. But in the countryside, in the towns where the clans need armed protection and cover for fugitives, and where their economic maneuvers are more exposed, alliances between politicians and Camorra families are tighter. Camorra clans rise to power through their commercial “empires. And that allows them to control everything else.



“The Licciardi family transformed what was merely a reservoir of cheap labor into a machine for the narcotics trade: an international criminal business. Thousands of people were co-opted, enrolled, or crushed by the System. Clothes and drugs. Business investments before all else.”

I I didn't even get to counterfeit electronics and all that but y'all get the point.

I'm not sure what clans control what today, but I'm sure it's still under the control of the SYSTEM....

And don't forget cigarettes too.... HUUUGE MONEY...

Imagine the NYC mob controlling the garment center, but in the absence of labor unions, with the actual merchandise WAAAY more expensive...

It's also interesting in that report, of all the criminal groups, they single out the Italian mafias as most likely to invest in the legit economy. Of of those they single out the Calabrians and Naples gangsters. It doesn't surprise me, they have the clan-business structure philosophy....

I sent you a PM CG..

In the new season of Fargo there is a character called V.M. Varga who does exactly what you describe here. He's quite a mysterious guy, who is very vague about the organization he belongs to. The only thing he reveals is that his employers' business interests lay outside the law.

The actor does an amazing job playing a criminal, villainous über-capitalist.

Thanks Cabrini and Billy

I made some edits so the post are actually readable, lol

Any thoughts??

For the small clans that dont had the money of the organization (due the arrest or the murder of the members) for traffick in drugs there many ways also profitables for make money:
The counterfeiting of cds and dvds, smuggling cigarettes, fraud of the funds of the European Union for Agriculture, fake street accidents but also with saling the finds archeological in the black market,steal cars and ask money to the owners for turn the car (aka il cavallo di ritorno) and extort the black pimps or the small pushers and the most evil aka bury dangerous waste ( I read of a ten year old died of cancer).
The Angelina Jolie chapter refer to the Casalesi clan that was the biggest clan in Campania.

http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_of_ours/neapolitan_mafia/page/101/

This link is about the Naples gangsters selling fake iPhones from China....

Another thing that popped into my mind is the profitability of prostitution . I think everyone would agree that your average man is much more interested in sex than illegal drugs , yet in spite of that drug trafficking is supposed to be more profitable than prostitution .

Of course it's a fact that it's harder for OC groups to bring prostitutes under their wing these days with the Internet and all , however it still kind of puzzles me that drugs are considered more lucrative sex for money .

Is part of the reason as to why due to many more people paying for drugs on a daily basis than sex ? I mean I can see that a small amount of drugs costs much less than time spent with a prostitute , not to mention that there's no such thing as true blue sex addiction .

All that said I'd still wager that there's a much bigger demand for drugs than sex , so there's that as well .

One thing is the street prostitution that in italy is done by the nigerians or the albanians that pay a tax to the OC groups and another is the escorts that can be payed even 1000 euros a night. here in italy prefer to collect money by the street pimps and use the money for buy the drugs.
The uptown madams are interested in wealthy men and don't had to pay nobody with oc ties.

I guess because not every man is out to buy sex especially from street women that are addicted to drugs. I personally and many other people(men) prefer the dating scene than buying for sex. The type of people that pay for sex are either desperate or street trash/low class people. Drugs are pretty much done by every class of people regardless of socioeconomic back ground. Drugs are just more lucrative.

Don't forget boredom or too busy for the dating scene in regards to the reason for prostitution. I disregard the low class unless you meant character and not income.

That's right Black Fam....

Look at all the celebrities, who clearly SHOULD be able to pull some decent women, STAY getting caught with escorts, and hookers. I mean from politicians like Spitzer, to guys like Eddie Murphy, Charlie Sheen with the porn stars, hell, some guys like Warren Sapp don't even want to pay...

I know a guy, young guy, hardworking immigrant from Croatia. Started as a doorman, went into driving a truck, now has his own rig. We bonded over him talking about Jordan, I impressed him by knowing who Drazen Petrovic was. This guy has a BAD ass chick. He can't get enough hookers. Like, I think the guy gets some kind of rush from paying for it, like a gambler or some shit, it's bizarre... Lol

This was in the papers just last week, one of these Thai girls got taken out of the place I work by Homeland security, I thought it was some Trump bullshit at the time lol....


http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/thai-pr...n-unique-twist/

The thing is, prostitution IS very profitable, all you need is women. But you can't fit a million dollars worth of whores in a suitcase and send it around the world like drugs....

In Chicago, at least, the mob was born out of prohibition -- that one decision created a massive black market for a commodity the public still wanted and suppliers didn't feel overly stigmatized by providing.

The net result was an underworld empire that grew preposterously powerful and wealthy and was then able to extend its tentacles into seemingly endless arenas.

After prohibition, the lifeblood of the mob was gambling. While the Outfit was arguably at the height of its power since the 60s, it's clearly been in decline since.

The blue collar inner city neighborhoods where these guys did business are for the most part gone, and most of the things the mob provided -- gambling, high-interest short term loans, porn -- are now legal.

From the very few mob-related busts we now read about (the overwhelming majority only tenuously connected to the mob), it's clear that the rackets, as they are, are at best a shadow of what they once were.

You are talking burglaries, robbing drug dealers, auto theft, etc., as opposed to one-time highly lucrative systems that kept insane amounts of cash pouring in.

At least, that is my opinion.

Cabrini

Yes it's odd to me as well at times. I know of this guy who work full overtime and have a ole lady who gives him plenty of bedplay and yet he still pays for an escort weekly. Different kitty each week per say. Im just smh

Back on track, Chop Shops still big business here along with Embezzlement, Kickback Bidrigging, Forgery, & Counterfeiting. Speaking of Mississippi.

While I don't doubt that you can find OC groups involved in street prostitution , I'd also wager that more sophisticated OC groups prefer to manage higher end prostitutes as opposed to your common street hooker .

Speaking of higher end prostitutes , is there any information available on OC involvement in the American escort scene ? I'm referring to America specifically because escorting is typically legal in much of Europe , while it's typically illegal in much of the States . I realize that it's harder for OC groups to manage escorts in the age of the Internet , however it's also a fact that escorts in jurisdictions that deem their profession illegal face a lot of obstacles when it comes to the issue of safety and dispute resolution . I mean it's not like your average escort in America can go to court over a client not paying her ( for example ) . Which makes the scene a potentially lucrative market for OC groups willing to provide protection and dispute resolution services .

2a

Despite the internet making escort activities more fluid , plenty crime groups operate prostitution rings. From La/Chi/NyC street orgs to 1% clubs & other crime groups.