Italian police reveal the exotic wildlife used to 'persuade' people to pay Mafia protection money - including a parrot trained to say "I'll kill you"
Police in Italy have lifted the lid on an enormous collection of animals they have confiscated from jailed or arrested mob bosses.
Threatening an adversary with a shotgun or a knife is no longer sufficient for the more flamboyant godfathers it seems, who are now resorting to a menagerie of exotic wildlife to extort protection money from business owners or to intimidate rivals.
Among the confiscated hoard were crocodiles, boa constrictors and an African grey parrot that had been trained by its drug-dealing mafia owner to say: “Adesso ti sparo” – “Now I’m going to shoot you”.
When drug addicts rang the mobster’s mobile phone to place an order, the bird would squawk down the line: “How much do you need?” (in Italian, “Quanta te ne serve?”)
When police raided the home of a known mafia boss near the town of Caserta, a stronghold of the Camorra near Naples, they found a crocodile kept on the terrace of the house.
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The reptile was used to “persuade” local businessmen and shop owners to pay “pizzo” – slang for protection money – to their mafia overlords.
“Instead of bullets, the Camorra are using these animals,” Marco Trapuzzano, a senior officer with the Corpo Forestale, Italy’s environmental police, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
“When business owners refused to pay what the Camorra regarded as owing to them, they’d be brought to the house and told ‘either you pay, or you’ll become the crocodile’s next meal’.”
Among the animals recovered by police was a 10-ft long boa constrictor. Mafia henchmen in Villa Literno, north of Naples, had smashed the car window of a 58-year-old businessman and left the snake on the back seat.
“It was a clear message of intimidation,” said Capt Trapuzzano.
A clan of Camorra drug-dealers used a large white python to protect their supplies of cocaine.
Animals are also used for prestige and as displays of power, such as the macaque monkeys that were kept by the head of a mafia clan in Avellino in the Campania region.
In 2011, a full-grown Siberian tiger was seized by police from the home of a former mob boss.
The big cat was owned by Lucio Vetrugno, 55, a boss with Sacra Corona Unita, Italy's fourth mafia organisation, after Sicily's Cosa Nostra, Calabria's 'Ndrangheta and the Neapolitan Camorra.
He used it to impress his friends and intimidate his enemies, until he was gunned down by rivals.
The tiger was kept in a cage for 16 years on an estate near the town of Monteroni di Lecce in Puglia. It was later transferred to an animal park in Bologna in northern Italy.
The fact that keeping such exotic animals without a proper license is illegal only adds to the appeal for mafia crime lords.
They are not only using wild animals to intimidate their enemies and squeeze money out of their victims.
They also make millions of pounds a year from illegally importing and selling exotic species, forging certificates from CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
A tiger cub can sell for up to 30,000 euros while big snakes such as anacondas and boa constrictors fetch up to 3,000 euros.
Rare species of tortoises from North Africa, snapping turtles and parrots are also imported and sold by the mob.
The number of animals being trafficked by the mafia has “recently reached alarming levels,” the Forestry Corps said.
The confiscated animals are cared for by the police force at refuges across Italy. “We are lucky to have found them. In a lot of other cases their owners get bored of them after a while and dump them in the streets, condemning them to die,” said Capt. Trapuzzano.
