Mafia Boss On The Run For 30 Years Finally Caught: You Won’t Believe Where
A Mafia boss who has been on the run from the law since 1984 has finally been arrested in the last place you’d typically expect to find a former crime lord – on the school run!
Sky News reports that Pasquale Scotti was one of Italy’s most dangerous, feared, and wanted fugitives when he absconded from a hospital near Naples over 30 years ago.
The Mafia boss, who was formerly the kingpin in one of Italy’s largest and oldest crime syndicates, the Camorra, remained on the run for two years before finally settling in Brazil.
Following extensive plastic surgery to avoid detection and reinventing himself as Francisco de Castro Visconti, the 56-year-old former boss of the Camorra got married and had two children, who were according to the Mafia boss, unaware of his former life as a crime lord.
The Mafia boss had been charged with illegal possession of weapons, extortion, and over 20 murders, and in absentia was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Italian court in 2005.
It was while taking his 13-year-old and 15-year-old daughters to school, that the Mafia boss was apprehended in Recife, a city in Brazil’s northwest by the police.
A fingerprint comparison was the key which unlocked the Mafia boss’s real identity for the detectives on the case, who later discovered Scotti had been using false identity cards and voter registration documents.
While in Brazil, Scotti established a successful real estate firm and fireworks company, but since his arrest both interests are being investigated for possible money laundering.
Scotti insisted during questioning that he went on the run to avoid being killed and maintained that he just wanted to forget his old life as a Mafia boss.
“I just want to forget the past. Pasquale Scotti no longer exists. Only Francisco de Castro exists.”
Scotti is expected to be extradited by the Italian government in the next few days. A Federal Police spokesman in Brazil has stated that the Mafia boss’s arrest is historical.
“It is the most important arrest in the history of Interpol in Brazil.”
(Image Via Sky News)
