The cost of coke in NYC is about to rise. On Thursday (May 7), a mafia cocaine ring run out of a NYC pizzeria was busted by local and Italian police.
Reports Raw Story:
Italian and U.S. agents broke up a major cocaine trafficking network run out of a New York City pizzeria, detaining 13 Italians with links to organized crime on Thursday, police said.
Italy’s elite SCO police and FBI agents captured the men as they slept in their homes in the southern Italian region of Calabria and held them on charges of conspiracy to run an international drug trafficking ring, police added.
The year-long investigation, dubbed Operation Columbus, was led by federal investigators in Brooklyn and prosecutors in Calabria, the region that is home to the ‘Ndrangheta, a mafia group on the Italian mainland akin to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra.
The network is accused of organizing cocaine shipments from Costa Rica to the United States and Europe.
There was no immediate statement from the arrested men or any lawyers representing them.
The details of the investigation are straight out an episode of Drugs, Inc. or The Wire.
The leader of the drug ring was Gregorio Gigliotti, 59, who has pled not guilty to importing cocaine to the U.S. and ran the “Cucino A Modo Mio” pizzeria in Queens.
Cops seized over $100,000 and weapons (including a shotgun) from Gigliotti’s store and home.
Allegedly, Franco Fazio, 56, traveled between Italy, the U.S. and Costa Rica to coordinate drug deals on Gibliotti’s behalf.
Prosecutors are surely going to point out that Gigliotti and his cronies were linked to 121 pounds of coke that was found and siezed in a couple of shipments of cassava in Philadelphia and Delaware out of Central America.
Also, the group may have been involved with three tons of cocaine caught making its way to Spain and the Netherlands.
Sounds like plenty of people are dropping dime, right now.
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Photo: Shutterstock/tlorna
