Sicilian gangsters complain they can't find staff

When anti-mafia police attacked the Sicilian mob on Tuesday, their main goal was to stop them from regrouping and creating a new governing body or cupola.

But what has emerged from their extensive investigation is an organized crime group that must adapt to modern realities and display a nostalgia for the loftier ambitions of the past.

They don't produce mobsters like they used to, Giancarlo Romano told an associate in a wiretapped conversation before he was shot dead a year ago.

Despite the apparent penchant for past crimes, the mafia in Sicily is still a force to be reckoned with, warns anti-mafia prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia.

"Cosa nostra is alive and present," he added, the Telegraph reports.

Investigators have discovered that the new generation of gang bosses have taken to using encrypted mobile phones, and thousands of short-lived micro-sim cards smuggled into prisons.

In this way they tried to avoid interception as they focused their activities on drug crime, money laundering, and online gambling.

Sicily's Cosa Nostra has even begun working with other gangs, including the notorious and much larger 'Ndrangheta on mainland Italy.

Of the 181 arrest warrants issued against suspected Sicilian gangsters in four districts of Palermo, 33 were for convicted figures already in prison.

Italian anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Melillo said that, despite all the crackdowns, the high-security prison system was at the mercy of the mob.

The investigation revealed that a gangster had been able to watch a beating he had ordered from inside the prison in real time via video link.

The mafia became extremely secure about the encrypted messaging platform it was using, which contained text messages, voice messages, and images.

But a year ago, a bug installed in a gangster's home recorded him and another man complaining about the connection dropping in an encrypted conversation.

As they tried to reestablish contact, the names of several mafia figures were mentioned loudly. Sicilian authorities listened to every word.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni praised the operation by Italy's Carabinieri military police, and promised that the fight against the mafia "has not stopped and will not stop." Half of those arrested are in their 20s and 30s.

In late 2023, Giancarlo Romano, considered a future mafia figure in the Brancaccio area in the heart of Sicily, Palermo, was recorded complaining about the decline of the mob and the poor quality of new recruits.

"The level is low, today they arrest someone and if he becomes a guard they arrest another low-level wretch," he is quoted as saying over the wiretapped phone.

He was heard telling an aspiring mobster to go to school, meet doctors and lawyers and learn lessons from watching "The Godfather" trilogy of films about the fictional Corleone gangster family.

Today's mafia makes do by selling small iron bars, hashish, while others are now moving away, he complained: "back then, those people who unfortunately ended up in life imprisonment did so because a ship with hashish was due to arrive."

Romano was killed and his associate was injured in February 2024, in an attack that appears to be linked to online gambling racketeering. The killing led authorities to make further arrests within Romano's mafia branch.

Cosa Nostra is a shadow of the notorious organized crime mob it once was, brought down by a wave of campaigns by the authorities in the last 30 years.

But despite efforts for a more modernized crowd, many of the old practices and codes remain.

"Cosa Nostra is like marriage. You are married to this woman and you stay with her for the rest of your life," one mobster was heard saying.

The clear implication was that there was no departure from Cosa Nostra. /Telegraph/