Mafia messages sent via top soccer show
Jailed mobsters get coded info though on-screen texts
20 August, 14:17
(ANSA) - Rome, August 20 - The Mafia has been sending
messages to jailed bosses via a popular soccer show on Italian
state broadcaster RAI, according to a top former anti-Mob
prosecutor.Organised crime clans used the Quelli che il Calcio show's tickertape at the bottom of the screen that broadcasts fans' text messages to get information to their imprisoned chiefs, Enzo Macri' told the parliament's anti-Mafia commission.
Macri', who is now the head prosecutor in Ancona, first reported the ploy at a meeting of the commission in May but the contents of the hearing only emerged publicly on Friday.
''Naturally sending text messages to Quelli che il Calcio is only one of the instruments used to get information to top security (Mafia) inmates,'' Macri' told ANSA.
''The messages often seem ordinary but in reality they hide important service notes to the bosses''.
Indeed, one of the coded messages used read simply: ''Everything's OK, Paolo''. Macri' said the show's producers were unaware that their programme was being exploited in this way.
The mobsters in question are some of over 600 in Italy receiving the so-called 41 bis ultra restrictive treatment in jail.
They are usually kept in single-person cells in maximum-security jails, although they are allowed to mix with five other inmates at a time, and they are not permitted to buy anything or to receive parcels.
photo: an shot of RAI show Quelli che il Calcio.
