Free Republic

The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia has emerged as the world's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe, and it further has become entrenched in Australia, Canada and the United States with surprisingly little push back from law enforcement in those countries. Indeed, Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy warns that "this mafia is quickly spreading in the United States, particularly in Florida and New York" as reported by Beatrice Borromeo for The Daily Beast: Gratteri's latest operations have led to the sentencing of 34 'Ndrangheta members and have uncovered a...

Reputed Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto will avenge the murders of son Nicola and father Nick upon his release from prison in October 2012 according to a jailhouse source as reported by Brad Hamilton for the New York Post: "he's been eating vegetarian, staying fit, sharpening his mind with games of pinochle — and plotting his coup, the source said." Vito Rizzuto currently is serving time at the supermax facility in Florence, CO on a 2007 racketeering conviction involving the 1981 New York City murders of three Bonanno capos during an internal power struggle, and during his incarceration all hell...

Reputed mob boss Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, who dodged the death penalty only weeks ago, was sentenced in a New York court to life in prison on Wednesday for ordering the murder of a mafia associate. Basciano, the former acting boss of New York's Bonanno crime family, is already serving a life sentence for a separate 2001 murder.

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

The bosses of New York's five Mafia families in the mid-1980s came a hair-trigger away from sanctioning a hit on then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, according to bombshell FBI records made public today. Before cooler heads prevailed - the mob bosses decided by a razor-thin 3-to-2 margin not to try to whack the future mayor and presidential candidate - at least two of the dons argued fervently that the mob-busting U.S. attorney should sleep with the fishes. Bonanno boss Philip “Rusty" Rastelli, Genovese chief Vincent “The Chin" Gigante and Lucchese honcho Anthony “Tony Ducks" Corallo all cast votes to spare the...

Louie Eppolito has been shopping movie scripts in search of a cinematic score to rival his popular paperback memoir, "Mafia Cop." Wednesday night at Piero's Italian Cuisine on Convention Center Drive, the retired New York police officer and Las Vegas resident was handed an improbable plot twist courtesy of the FBI and DEA. Title it the "Ghost of Eddie Lino." At approximately 6 p.m., the 56-year-old Eppolito was arrested along with former NYPD partner Steve Caracappa in connection with the murder of Gambino and Bonanno crime family associate Eddie Lino. Lino was among the shooters named by Gambino crime family...