A Christmas offer they couldn’t refuse: Naples' Camorra mafia members arrested for forcing shopkeepe

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Independent

A Christmas offer they couldn’t refuse: Naples' Camorra mafia members arrested for forcing shopkeepers to buy €100 poinsettia plants
John Hall
Tuesday 17 December 2013

The Christmas spirit appears to be sleeping with the fishes in southern Italy.

Four members of Naples’ notorious Camorra crime organisation have been arrested for making city centre shopkeepers a Christmas an offer they couldn’t refuse: festive poinsettia plants with prices hiked to over 100 times their usual price.

The gangsters are believed to have run the extortion scam for at least three years, forcing small businesses in and around Piazza del Mercato to part with €100 (around £85) per plant - which are known as Stella di Natale, or Christmas stars, in Italy.

Shopkeepers would normally expect to pay just $1 (85p) per plant to a wholesaler.

Police say the arrested men are members of the Camorra’s infamous Mazzarella clan – a powerful mafia group which has its roots in Naples’ ramshackle market areas and specialises in illegal cigarette smuggling, extortion and low-level drug trafficking.


Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-christmas-offer-they-couldnt-refuse-naples-camorra-mafia-members-arrested-for-forcing-shopkeepers-to-buy-100-poinsettia-plants-9009881.html

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Idiots

The people are pissed and want this crap to stop. They just want to make a buck - but they want to make it honest. And not deal with this b.s. I still think Camorra and Ndrengheta are pissed that they have gotten locked out of the major infrastructure projects so they are resorting to this.

Here's an idea - go fill out an application with my brother in law's company and put in a hard days work blasting through mountains, shoring up the tunnels and paving the roads. He pays extremely well.

Right now - he's got to worry about these lazy little snots trying to roll his employees who by and large are Rural Southerners and legal (have to be to work on government contracts there) immigrants from Africa. Camorra has dirty hands ALSO when it comes to these folks.

Enough.