ROME — By night, the Calabrian immigrant family served up piping-hot pizza. After hours, Italian and U.S. authorities say, the restaurant in New York was filling other orders: allegedly running a cocaine trafficking ring that spanned three continents.
The ring sent suitcases of cash by courier to Costa Rica, and drug shipments through Pennsylvania and Delaware destined for Spain, Holland and Italy, according to a joint FBI and Italian investigation made public at a news conference Thursday in Rome.
The Cucino a Modo Mio (I Cook It My Way) restaurant was a popular local haunt with a secret weapons cache, officials say. Inside a safe, investigators found six pistols, a rifle, ammunition, brass knuckles, other weapons and $100,000 in cash.
The operation points to what investigators say is an increasingly deep-rooted U.S. stronghold for the ‘ndrangheta, the southern Italian crime syndicate that has taken advantage of the Sicilian Mafia’s disarray and is consolidating ties with New York’s traditional Cosa Nostra crime clans.
At least 13 people were arrested in predawn raids in Calabria, the region in southern Italy that is the power base of the ‘ndrangheta, which authorities say is focused on consolidating its influence and operations in the U.S. They were held on investigation of suspicion of drug trafficking, Italian prosecutors said.
Three Calabrians, identified by Italian and U.S. authorities as Gregorio Gigliotti, his wife, Eleanora, and son Angelo, were arrested two months ago in New York. All were members of the family that ran the pizzeria in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, authorities said.
Angelo Gigliotti’s lawyer, Gerald McMahon, said the case against his client is weak. His client pleaded not guilty following his March 11 arrest and is being held without bail. There was no immediate response to messages left Thursday for the lawyers of the two other defendants in New York.
Cucino a Modo Mio was the command center for an international trafficking operation, said Andrea Grassi, who is in charge of the Rome-unit of a Italian state police special operations division known as SCO.
Italian authorities said they seized 56 kilograms cocaine in the Netherlands and Spain in an investigation earlier in 2014, a run-up to this probe.
“In the evening, the family ran a good pizzeria,” Grassi said. “In other hours they were running” the drug trade.
The cocaine, in small packets, was hidden in boxes of shipments of yucca and loaded onto cargo ships setting sail from Costa Rica, Italian police said. The Italian investigators estimated the seized cocaine had a wholesale value of a half of a million dollars and would have yielded at least 10 times that on the streets,
The probe is continuing, and investigators said they couldn’t say now how much money the ring made off the cocaine business.
