GAMBINO MAFIA
Dealt a heavy blow to the Mafia pact on the Palermo-New York route. The Palermo police demolished the vertexes and affairs of the Passo di Rigano district with a blitz started at dawn and conducted by over 200 men from the mobile squad, the central operational service and the FBI in New York.

Executed numerous arrests, arranged by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of the Prosecutor of Palermo, against as many members of the district that have to respond in various ways, of crimes conspiracy mafia-type, extortion, collusion with the Mafia, fraudulent transfer of aggravated values, unfair competition aggravated by the Mafia method and others.


The investigations of the operation, called " New connection ", recorded the strong bond established between Cosa Nostra Palermo and US organized crime, with particular reference to the powerful Gambino Crime Family of New York, as well as the strong pervasive capacity of the family mafia from Passo di Rigano, on the legal economy of the neighborhood on the outskirts of Palermo, according to a widespread division of roles and duties: from wholesale food supply to classic extortion, through the management of online games and bets.

inzerillo mafia
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The return of the Inzerillo, the family exterminate
In Passo di Rigano, important representatives of the Inzerillo family had re-established their criminal stronghold , a historic Palermo mafia cell, decimated in the 1980s by the second mafia war. At the end of the investigations, it turned out that these " escapes ", who had returned to Italy in the early 2000s, had reconstituted the ranks of the "family", also thanks to the rediscovered balance with the opposing criminal faction.

During the "New Connection" operation, movable assets, real estate and company shares were seized for about three million euros attributable to the Inzerillo who had reconstituted part of the army of the 'Scappati', escaped from the fury of the Corleonesi of Totò Riina and in the recently returned to command in a piece of Palermo.

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Among the 19 arrested, therefore, Francesco and Tommaso Inzerillo , respectively brother and cousin of Salvatore "Totuccio" Inzerillo, killed by the Corleonese. They were arrested in the Gotha operation and then released.


The mayor of Torretta (Palermo) Salvatore Gambino , who was arrested during the night by policemen from the mobile squad, was also "available" to the gangs . The accusation p of external competition in mafia association. "Did I not make him win the elections?", Bragged Simone Zito intercepted: resident in America, speaking of Gambino, in charge since June 2018.


Calogero Zito, a 32-year-old son of Simone, born in the United States and resident of Torretta, also among those arrested, instead discusses with another man the assignment of the duties of councilors and councilors of the town of Torretta, indicating the names, then assignments actually assumed by the indicated subjects.

Business was spinning between Palermo and the United States.

There is Thomas Gambino, son of the American mobster Joseph, in a video of 3 August. Discusses with Tommaso Inzerillo about the division of the proceeds from the possible sale of a large piece of land in the Dominican Republic.

Formally registered to Frank Cali ', at the head of the Gambino family killed in March in New York and to the heirs of Benedetto Villico Benedetto, the deceased uncle of Tommaso Inzerillo who is hidden in the property in a hidden manner. In the images a meeting is resumed between mobsters, all of whom are now under arrest, of Passo di Rigano which took place aboard a rubber boat in the Gulf of Mondello last summer.

The property of Calogero Zito , in New Jersey, owned by Thomas Gambino , in Staten Island (New York) and Simone Zito , in Philadelphia, were seized for 3 million euros and searched by Italian FBI and Italian investigators .

The search decrees were issued by the DDA of Palermo and carried out at the end of the planned rogatory procedure. The suspects respond, in various ways, to mafia-type criminal association, aggravated extortion, external competition in mafia association, fraudulent transfer of aggravated values, unfair competition aggravated by the mafia method and others.