Notorious Mafia figures were heard moaning about new recruits snitching to cops, and dreamt their lives were more like ‘The Godfather’ – a movie centred around an ‘influential’ Mafia family
Mafia bosses have been moaning about lousy new recruits and wishing their lives were more like “The Godfather” in fascinating new wiretaps shared by police.
Giancarlo Romano, a notorious Mafia figure in Sicily’s capital, Palermo, was heard moaning along with other real-life godfathers about how new members are too quick to snitch, breaking the Mafia’s historic code of omertà — which forbids them to cooperate with the police or legal authorities.
They were then captured wishing their lives were more like “The Godfather” — the 1972 hit movie starring Marlon Brando as a well-connected Mafia boss, Don Corleone. “The calibre these days is low, a miserable level,” Cosa Nostra don Giancarlo Romano said after Sicilian police captured and detained nearly 150 alleged mafia members in dawn raids Tuesday.
“If you watch ‘The Godfather,’ the connections he had… he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level. But us — what can we do? We’re on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it’s others who do it”, Romano said in one of the intercepted calls.
“We used to be number one, now it’s others,” he continued. We’re just gypsies.” In a separate phone recording, the alleged mafia boss was heard telling a young recruit to “go to school” instead, and mingle with “doctors, lawyers, the people who run Italy, Europe.” The wiretaps also uncovered the nicknames godfathers use to refer to each other — including Spider-Man, Bear, Nephew, and Robert De Niro, another star from The Godfather franchise.
More than a thousand armed cops stormed areas around the Sicilian capital on Tuesday, February 11, to carry out raids that saw warrants issued for 183 people — including 36 who were already in custody — on charges including murder, extortion, drug trafficking, arms possession and mafia association.
In a press conference, Palermo’s chief prosecutor, Maurizio de Lucia, revealed Cosa Nostra is building up its drug trafficking operations, and that criminal groups are purchasing guns on the dark web to impose protection rackets across the city.
“The investigations that led to Tuesday’s arrests demonstrate that Cosa Nostra is alive and present and communicates with completely new communication channels,” he said in the press conference. “It is doing business and trying to rebuild its army.”
