3 million euros... in the walls of the mafia

ROME - AFP - Italian police discovered approximately three million euros in cash hidden inside the walls of the home of a mafia boss and one of the major suspected drug traffickers in Naples, based on intelligence information, a senior official from the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The seizure was part of an investigation launched in 2023, which resulted in the arrest of 34 people on charges of membership in an armed criminal organization and the use of mafia methods in drug trafficking.

Naples Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told AFP that cash and a weapons cache were seized last year from a property in Caivano, a northeastern suburb of Naples in southern Italy, an area controlled by the Camorra mafia.

The information came from a suspect arrested in July 2025 who subsequently became a prosecution witness. Two days after his arrest, police searched the residence.

Gratteri explained, “We all knew the money existed, but we did not know its exact location, so we conducted a thorough search of the house. Many bundles of cash were hidden in the walls and in cabinets built into the furniture.”

Investigators focused on a neighborhood in Caivano known as a hub for large-scale drug trafficking, particularly cocaine.

According to the local news outlet Anticrima 24, the informant told police that the money was in the possession of the drug dealer’s wife, and that her minor children were part of a team tasked with monitoring it around the clock.

The Camorra, headquartered in the Naples area, is one of Italy’s three major organized crime groups, alongside the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta.

Gratteri noted that wiretapping of phone calls played a crucial role in the investigation, as is the case in all investigations targeting organized crime.