Naples – The camorra confirms itself as the most advanced organised crime in the use of digital technologies, even surpassing the 'ndrangheta in the field of Dark web.
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The Chief Prosecutor of Naples stated this, Nicola Gratteri, during a meeting with the parish priest of Caivano, Don Patriciello, as part of èStoria, the cultural festival of Gorizia.
The Camorra in the Dark Web and Entrepreneurship
According to Gratteri, the Camorra is “very advanced, especially on the dark web”, and demonstrates greater sophistication than the 'ndrangheta even in business and catering, with a significant presence not only in Northern Italy but also in Europe.
The Prosecutor cited an investigation conducted in Naples on a online bank with six thousand customers, equipped with a sophisticated Israeli-built shielding system. This bank, Gratteri revealed, managed to launder 3,3 billion euros in two years, with branches also in Lithuania and Latvia, and used 600 encrypted telephones for communications between its members.
The 'Ndrangheta and the Bitcoin Phenomenon
In Calabria, however, the 'ndrangheta families of Crotone would have hired Romanian and German hackers for bitcoin mining, taking advantage of the “mathematical culture” present in Romania. Gratteri explained that in Calabria “there is a strong presence of powerful calculators to extract electronic money”, highlighting how criminal cartels have started accepting bitcoin payments only in the last 3-4 years.
Gratteri expressed a critical opinion on the reforms in the judicial field, defining them as "useless" from the Cartabia reform onwards, with the sole exception of Cybersecurity Act of July 2024. This regulation, he says, allows us to “stop a hacker and make him work for us”.
The Prosecutor told an exemplary case: a hacker who had control of the Ministry of Justice domain, with the ability to access the prosecutor's offices, delete names and crimes or register people. "We arrest him, we convince him to work, he trusts me and speaks: eight months of wiretaps," Gratteri revealed.
This led to the seizure of 34 million bitcoins on the dark web, a sum already converted into euros and transferred to the single justice fund. “As a collaborator of justice we will give him the lowest possible sentence and therefore the money immediately enters the state's assets,” concluded Gratteri, underlining the importance of such collaborations in the fight against cybercrime.
Article published on May 31, 2025 - 16:15 pm
