An underboss in New York City's Gambino mob family was arrested in New York City for extortion in Italy, the Daily News reported on Thursday.
The southern Italian city of Potenza sent for the arrest of Francesco Palmeri, 61, after he and seven others tried to get $1.23 million out of an Italian businessman by blackmailing him.
Palmeri was arrested at home in Brooklyn by U.S. and Italian police. Five of the other seven gangsters involved in the extortion were from Italy and two were from the U.S., Italian officers said.
Palmeri, who was born in Sicily, is an underboss in the Gambino family, New York's most powerful and notorious mob family.
In 2013, the mobster traveled to Italy to confront the businessman about paying up on a loan from the 1980s. The family also sent letters asking for the money and signed them "friends in Brooklyn."
The loan likely came from international drug traffickers who were involved with New York mobster Cesare Bonventre, now deceased, the Guardian reported. He was a high-ranking member of the Bonannos, another New York organized crime family, before he was murdered in 1984. Bonventre and Palmeri were from the same town in Sicily.
Palmeri could be sent to prison for a maximum of 20 years if convicted of his charges - conspiracy to commit international extortion aggravated by mafia membership.
Italian organized crime families like the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and Sicilian Cosa Nostra have usually worked closely with their counterparts in the U.S., but there have been less arrests since the height of mob activity between the two countries in the 1980s.
"This demonstrates the international reach of the 'Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra and their still-strong ties with the historic New York mob families," said Andrea Grassi, an investigator for SCO, an Italian anti-mafia police unit.
