An unidentified Liverpool man will rest easy tonight knowing the net has finally snared his Sicilian mob boss lookalike.
Finally, after 30-years on the run, Italy's most-wanted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has been captured, reports the BBC. Denaro was said to have been detained at a private clinic in Sicily's capital, Palermo, this morning in an operation involving more than 100 members of Italy's armed forces.
The mafia boss became a fugitive in 1993, and in 2010, Forbes Magazine listed him as one of the 10 most wanted men in the world. With so many eyes on the lookout for the Italian underworld crime boss, it was in 2021 that an unwitting Liverpool man became the unintended target of a sting operation.
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The Liverpool man - thought to be living in Spain - was in the Netherlands to attend the Dutch Formula 1 Grand Prix and had innocently been eating in a restaurant when armed police officers swooped. Identified only as 54-year old 'Mark L', he was blindfolded and led away by officers to a maximum security prison.
His lawyer, Leon van Kleef, told journalists it was "like a bad movie, a nightmare that my client has found himself in". He continued: "Imagine one moment you are having a bite to eat and the next you are sat in a maximum-security Dutch prison."
He said his client "had anger and disbelief and laughter because it is ludicrous". Mr Kleef added: "It would have been a genius of an Italian to have such a strong Liverpool accent."
In a later interview, the arrested Liverpool man's lawyer told The Guardian: "When my client’s wife, who was initially worried, realised it was a misunderstanding and that her husband had been arrested under the accusation of being Matteo Messina Denaro, she couldn't stop laughing."
He was released after investigations into whether he was the crime lord turned out to be false. It appears the reason 'Mark L' was arrested was due to his appearance resembling a computer aged photofit of what they suspect Denaro to look like since his disappearance in 1993, and had been widely circulated by both Italian and Dutch media outlets.
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The real Messina Denaro was tried and sentenced to life in jail in absentia in 1992 over numerous murders, including the killing of anti-mafia prosecutors, deadly 1993 bomb attacks in Italy, and the kidnapping, torture and killing of the 11-year-old son of a mafioso turned state witness. .
The mafia boss also controlled racketeering, illegal waste dumping, money-laundering and drug-trafficking for the Cosa Nostra crime syndicate. Although he had been on the run since 1993, it's thought he was still able to issue orders to his crime gang from secret locations.
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Said to be unlike other mafia bosses, before he became a fugitive he was known as a ruthless, playboy type figure and womaniser, with a fleet of Porsches who wore flashy clothes, aviator-style sunglasses and Rolex watches.
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