World
Sicilian mafia bosses complain on wiretaps about lack of quality recruits, reminisce about 'The Godfather'
What happened to never going against the family?
Leaders within the Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s mafia, have reportedly complained that mob recruits aren’t what they used to be, as nearly 150 people associated with the group were arrested this week.
“The level is low, today they arrest someone and if he becomes a turncoat they arrest another… wretched low-level,” former Cosa Nostra boss Giancarlo Romano said in a wiretapped conversation last year before he was killed in a shootout, according to BBC News.
Romano also revealed that he was nostalgic for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic “The Godfather,” about a fictional mob family in New York.
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Carabinieri officers in Sicily. (Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“If you watch ‘The Godfather,’ the connections he had… he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level,” Romano told his associate.
He continued, “But us – what can we do? We’re on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it’s others who do it. We used to be number one, now it’s others… we’re just gypsies.”
The mobsters also seem to like actor Robert De Niro, who played Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” and Spider-Man as other wiretaps revealed them as nicknames for each other, according to The Guardian.
This week Sicilian officers conducted early morning raids, serving 183 arrest warrants on those believed to be associated with the Cosa Nostra for crimes ranging from mafia association to extortion and attempted murder. Of those, 36 were already in custody.
While raids like this week’s have weakened the Cosa Nostra, Italian officials warn they are still a threat.
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“The investigations that led to Tuesday’s arrests demonstrate that Cosa Nostra is alive and present and communicates with completely new communication channels,” Maurizio de Lucia, chief prosecutor of Sicily’s capital of Palermo, said at a press conference, referencing the mafia’s use of encrypted apps to communicate with each other. “It is doing business and trying to rebuild its army.”
Domenico La Padula, with the Italian Carabinieri police, told The New York Times this week that the Cosa Nostra “is far from dead.”
He said they have been able to survive by finding “new energy and new strength,” with new recruits and 21st-century criminal ventures like online gambling.
Palermo, Sicily’s capital. (Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Cosa Nostra has remained “strongly tied to the rules of its founding fathers and its ancient rituals,” the Carabinieri told The Times, adding that their use of encrypted devices has “limited the need for traditional meetings and gatherings to the bare minimum.”
John Dickie, who wrote “Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse and Cosa Nostra, A History of the Sicilian Mafia,” told The Telegraph that Italian authorities have become “fantastic” at surveilling the mafia.
“Mafia dons have been caught boasting how good their anti-bugging devices were, at the same time that they were being bugged,” he revealed.
Dickie also agreed that the Cosa Nostra appears to be “in decline.”
“You only have to read the phone taps where the bosses are saying ‘it’s not like it used to be,’” he said. “This is about the fifth time that the bosses have tried to reorganise the cupola since the early 1990s. Every time they have been thwarted. The authorities were on to them.”
He continued, “These arrests mean that Cosa Nostra has another big task to rebuild, and they show that the state is still stronger than the mafia.”
Saakashvili was found guilty of illegal border crossing and given a second prison sentence of four and a half years on Monday, in addition to his existing sentence on charges of abuse of power and embezzlement.
A Georgian court sentenced former President Mikheil Saakashvili to another prison term on Monday, extending his imprisonment time to 12 and a half years.
Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president from 2004-2013, had previously been sentenced on charges of abuse of power and embezzlement that he and his defence have rejected as politically motivated.
Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili sentenced the 57-year-old ex-president to an extra four years and six months on charges of illegal border crossing, adding time to his existing sentence.
Speaking by videoconference, Saakashvili dismissed the verdict as an “absolutely illegal, unjust sentencing of me for crimes I have not committed.”
“They want to annihilate me in prison,” he said. “But no matter what, I will fight till the end,” he vowed.
According to his lawyer, Beka Basilaia, Monday’s verdict “again showed that Saakashvili is a political prisoner.”
Saakashvili, a controversial reformist
Saakashvili is also accused of repressing demonstrators who claimed that his fervour had turned into dictatorship.
The former president, who led the country in a more pro-Western direction, led the so-called Rose Revolution protests in 2003 that drove his predecessor out of office and enacted a series of ambitious reforms tackling official corruption.
In 2008, he oversaw a brief but intense war with Russia that ended with the humiliating loss of the remaining Georgian bases in two separatist territories.
His reign was brought to an end in the 2012 election when the then newly formed Georgian Dream Party defeated Saakashvili’s United National Movement party.
Saakashvili left for Ukraine in 2013 and became a citizen. From 2015 to 2016, he governed the southern Odesa region.
However, he was swiftly detained when he returned to Georgia in October 2021 in an attempt to strengthen opposition forces before the national municipal elections.
Georgian Dream accused of influencing verdict
Saakashvili’s lawyer on Monday accused the ruling Georgian Dream of influencing the latest extension of the ex-Georgian leader’s prison term.
“As long as Georgian Dream remains in power, the judiciary is a farce and will make whatever decision it is instructed to,” Basilaia said.
Since 2012, when Saakashvili was ousted from office, the Georgian Dream Party has remained in power and itself has recently been facing criticisms and popular protests on allegations of a crackdown on democratic freedoms.
ADVERTISEMENTThe party is also accused of steering the country away from the path toward European Union membership and back into Russia’s sphere of influence.
After going on multiple hunger strikes, Saakashvili is currently being treated at the Vivamedi facility, where he is being monitored for a number of chronic illnesses, according to the clinic.
U.S. warships have shot down roughly a dozen Houthi drones since President Donald Trump launched airstrikes against the terrorist organization on Saturday, Fox News has learned.
A senior defense official told Fox News of the developments on Sunday. The drones were aimed at the U.S. Navy’s Truman Carrier Strike Group, and were shot down “well before” they posed a serious threat, the official added.
The latest military action came after nearly a year and a half of attacks from Houthis, both on commercial merchant vessels and U.S. military ships. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump wrote that he had “ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.”
“It has been over a year since a U.S.-flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden,” Trump continued. “The last American Warship to go through the Red Sea, four months ago, was attacked by the Houthis over a dozen times.”
US NAVY SHIPS REPEL ATTACK FROM HOUTHIS IN GULF OF ADEN
U.S. warships intercepted and shot down around a dozen Houthi drones since President Donald Trump’s airstrikes were launched on Mar. 15. (Getty Images/AP)
Trump wrote that the “relentless assaults have cost the U.S. and World Economy many BILLIONS of Dollars while, at the same time, putting innocent lives at risk.”
“To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!” his post concluded.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump re-designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in January. His first administration had named the Houthis as an FTO, but the Biden administration later reversed the move.
On Sunday, the White House released photos of Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz monitoring the strikes.
President Trump is taking action against the Houthis to defend U.S. shipping assets and deter terrorist threats, the White House posted on X on March 15, 2025. (The White House)
“President Trump is taking action against the Houthis to defend US shipping assets and deter terrorist threats,” the White House wrote on X. “For too long American economic & national threats have been under assault by the Houthis. Not under this presidency.”
Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
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