An Italian mafia boss who has been on the run for decades has been arrested after being spotted on the notorious Google Maps app. Gioacchino Gammino, 61, was found in the Madrid town of Galapagar, where he lived hidden under the name of Manuel.
A Google Street View capture showing a man resembling Gammino standing in front of a grocery store was key to tracking down the fugitive , investigators in charge of the case have stated. Gammino escaped from a Rome jail in 2002 and was sentenced to life in prison the following year on various charges, including murder.
A mafia boss in Spain
Gammino was a member of a Sicilian mafia group known as the Stidda, and was one of the most wanted mafiosi in Italy. The Sicilian police already suspected that the kingpin was in Spain, but it was the photo of him talking to a man outside a cocktail bar called El Huerto de Manu that triggered an immediate investigation to verify the mobster’s identity.
His identity was confirmed when police found a Facebook page for a now-closed restaurant, Manu’s Kitchen, which was located near where the Google Street View screenshot was taken. Several photos of Gammino wearing chef’s clothing had been posted on the Facebook profile and he was identified by a conspicuous scar on his chin. Also, the restaurant had Sicilian dishes on the menu. White and bottled.
Gammino was arrested on January 17, but the Italian media did not report the news for several days. After his arrest, he allegedly told police, “How did you find me? I haven’t even called my family for the last 10 years.” The member of the Sicilian mafia is currently in police custody in Spain and the Italian police expect to take him back to his country at the end of February, as the police authorities of the Mediterranean country have assured.
Gammino was wanted for murder and various other crimes related to multiple Mafia-related activities. He was arrested a second time in Barcelona in 1998. He was serving a life sentence in Rome’s Rebibbia prison when, in 2002, he managed to escape during a prison rampage during a film shoot.
It is not the first time that a mafia fugitive has been caught with the help of web tools. In March of last year, Mark Feren Claude Biart was spotted in the Caribbean after appearing in several YouTube cooking videos. Biart had been a fugitive from justice since 2014, when Italian prosecutors ordered his arrest for cocaine trafficking in the Netherlands on behalf of the Cacciola clan of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
Until his arrest, Biart had led a quiet life among the expatriate Italian community in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic.
