The Hole Gang, Ferdinando Russo's confession: "I blame myself for everything." Framed by wiretaps

The "hole pact" had been formed a month and a half earlier: planning had begun well before the demolition hammers and trowels had even scratched the concrete beneath Aversa. Five men, a precise target—the "Marotta" jewelry store—and a strategy carefully planned down to the smallest detail.

Ferdinando Russo himself, stopped by State Police officers on the morning of November 5, 2022, and forced to spill the beans out of a desperate family instinct, recounts the internal architecture of the commando: "The plan to carry out this 'hit' was hatched a month and a half before the day of the robbery and was organized and carried out by me and four other people."

In front of the Flying Squad investigators, Russo rewound the tape of a grueling underground operation: "It required preparation, for which we had to procure tools such as mallets, trowels, boots, work overalls, and balaclavas.

The tools were needed to begin excavating the sewers to reach the target… since our plan called for the entrance to be through the floor."

Twenty Days in the Mud: The Handkerchief Trick

The story shifts to the labyrinthine sewer system beneath Via Andreozzi. A criminal underworld operation that lasted about twenty days, suspended only when the weather threatened to turn the canals into death traps.

"We didn't enter the sewers every day because of the bad weather. Only when the sun was shining did we enter the sewers through a manhole on a street—I think it's called Via Andreozzi." To find their way in the dark, under tons of asphalt, the gang had devised a makeshift but effective system.

Russo explains the positioning of the landmarks: "I had previously gone to the manhole closest to the Marotta jewelry store; there, I had placed a handkerchief inside the manhole, leaving a landmark. So, when we entered the sewers, we found the handkerchief, which was a signal that we were close to the jewelry store."

From that moment on, the math of the heist kicked in: "We relied on the 'step counting' system: that is, we first counted the meters on the street to calculate the distance from the manhole where we had left the handkerchief and the entrance to the jewelry store, and then we repeated the same meter count when we were in the sewer."

While three of them took turns in the heavy excavation, a fifth accomplice remained on the surface to act as a lookout, moving around on a bicycle and communicating with rudimentary acoustic signals to avoid being intercepted: "The signal was almost always made by making noise on the floor, that is, by stamping with his feet, dropping the bike or something heavy, like a screwdriver... rarely he used one of the portable radios we had."

The thrill of a fire department inspection

A few days before the raid, the plan nearly fell apart. The jewelry store owner, suspicious of thumping noises coming from the floor, alerted the police. The fire department, municipal police, and Carabinieri responded to the scene. It was a tense moment that Ferdinando Russo personally witnessed, mingling with passersby: "I went to the scene and saw that they had opened the manholes and were carrying out an inspection, but they didn't reach the target."

Emergency crews were unable to penetrate the gang's lair. The reason? Russo describes it with absolute matter-of-factness: "I believe that during the inspection they didn't reach the excavation site because to reach it, they had to lie down and walk a few meters with their stomachs and face in contact with the mud and dirty water."

The next day, having ascertained that the hydraulic jack and the iron plate positioned under the shop floor were intact, the commando decided to take action.

The armed assault and the spoils of discord

On the morning of the robbery, around 7:30 a.m., the gang went into action. One member was replaced at the last minute for "personal reasons." Receiving the green light from the lookout, Russo activated the jack, broke through the floor, and emerged first into the jewelry store, brandishing a blank-firing pistol without the red cap.

The three people inside the shop—the owner and two customers—were restrained with plastic zip ties and locked in a back room. Despite the unexpected intervention of the owner's son, who managed to shove open the door before being pushed back by the drawn gun, the robbers managed to empty the safe and display cases.

Then the hasty escape through the same sewer hole, abandoning their weapons along the way and throwing their suits into the dirty water. The only unplanned item? A Rolex stolen from a customer. But the actual proceeds would prove paltry compared to expectations.

Russo claims he received only a paltry sum: "The stolen goods were taken by one of the group, who then sold them and gave me my share, equivalent to 2.000 euros." The suspect claims he desperately needed the money to pay for the medical care of his 7-year-old brother.

The bugs in the police headquarters destroy the defensive strategy

The real judicial twist, however, comes not from Ferdinando's spontaneous statements, but from the hidden microphones of the Caserta Flying Squad. Immediately after the searches, the Russo brothers (Ferdinando, Francesco, and Jonathan) are taken to the police station. They are unaware that they are being wiretapped. Ferdinando, terrified that an accomplice (Giuseppe Palumbo) has "sung" them to the police, orders his brother Francesco to pretend to have nothing to do with the events.

The goal is clear: to shoulder full criminal responsibility to save the rest of the family. The images captured by surveillance cameras show tense faces, whispers, and gestures of understanding on the couch in the police station.

Francis initially accepts the directive and says he is ready to protect his own flesh and blood: "...it's a problem since I blame myself for everything..."

But the heat of the moment causes Francis to make a fatal mistake. When he believes he's not being heard, he lets loose with rancor-filled outbursts toward the alleged informer and, above all, uses the first person plural, self-exiling himself from the position of innocence: "...plus our robbery..."

And again, complaining about the meager loot compared to the value estimated by the media: "...the 300.000 euro heist... they should know that we took 600 euros!"

"We made a mess": the wiretaps

Closing the investigation are the phone records and recordings of Francesco Russo's calls immediately after he was released from custody by the police (while his brother Ferdinando was formally detained). Speaking on the phone to his girlfriend, the young man can't seem to contain the weight of the void that is building around him.

After confiding in her about the seizure of his cell phone and the conversation with his lawyer, he utters the phrase that, for the Prosecutor's Office, is equivalent to signing the register of suspects: "Anyway, we really made a bit of a mess."

An admission of co-responsibility that was clear to investigators, further aggravated by a subsequent scene of jealousy and anger that erupted the following Sunday. His girlfriend, naively reminding him that he himself had told her they couldn't have lunch together because "I have to go on Sunday," got on Francesco's nerves.

According to the Judicial Police's theory, that departure coincided perfectly with Giuseppe Palumbo's plans to begin the preparatory phase of a new away heist. Russo's furious reaction, with him heavily insulting his partner in an attempt to backtrack ("I wasn't supposed to go anywhere," he later said, referring to a restaurant lunch), is the magistrates' key evidence: the gang from the hole was already ready to strike again.