The son of a powerful Naples mafia boss who had once distanced himself from his criminal roots has been arrested alongside his father for possible extortion.
In 2019, Antonio Piccirillo, 28, broke the Italian mafia’s code of silence to denounce the actions of the Camorra group – one of Italy‘s oldest and largest criminal organisations that his family has been a part of for generations.
His arrest now raises questions about whether his anti-mafia campaigning was all a front, as investigators have accused Antonio and his father of making extortion demands against business owners managing moorings of rentable boats in Mergellina, Naples.
Antonio is said to have presented himself as his father’s emissary while demanding thousands of euros.
The investigation which led to his arrest began after Italian TikToker Rita De Crescenzo – whose husband managed a mooring – allegedly received death threats from the father and son duo, and reported it.
Antonio Piccirillo (pictured), the son of a powerful Naples mafia boss who had once distanced himself from his criminal roots has been arrested alongside his father for possible extortion
His arrest now raises questions about whether his anti-mafia campaigning was all a front, as investigators have accused Antonio and his father of making extortion demands against business owners managing
‘When you go to make a complaint, make sure they write there are two of us who want to kill you – me and my father’, Antonio reportedly told them.
Rosario, one of the bosses of the Torretta Camorra clan, was last imprisoned in 2022 for extortion and usury.
But by then, Antonio was believed to have turned his back on his father after a four-year old was wounded by a stray bullet during a shoot-out in a Naples square in 2019.
Following the tragic incident, he attended an anti-mafia protest where he grabbed a megaphone and told the crowds: ‘My name is Antonio Piccirillo. I am the son of Rosario Piccirillo, who, in his life, made many mistakes and was a member of Italy’s Camorra mafia.
‘Always love you parents, but dissociate yourself from their lifestyle, because it leads nowhere and only causes suffering’.
After that, he began regularly attending anti-mafia protests, where he would be seen denouncing the organized crime group Camorra as a ‘mountain of s**t’.
In 2021, he even stood as a councillor in local elections, but only won a few hundred votes.
Antonio once told Spanish newspaper El Pais that his biggest regret in life was ‘not having spoken out earlier’.
Antonio and his father of making extortion demands against business owners managing moorings of rentable boats in Mergellina, Naples
The 28-year-old and his father’s recent arrest come after Camorra assassins gunned down an engineer in Naples earlier this year after he exposed the Italian Mafia organisation’s construction racket.
Salvatore Coppola, 66, was shot in the face by his killers on March 12 in the car park of a Deco store, just metres away from an Apple Headquarters, in San Giovanni a Teduccio.
The victim reportedly had past ties in the mob world and had once been a white-collar criminal close to the Mazzarella clan – historically considered to be one of the most powerful groups of the Camorra.
But after leaving the criminal organisation to collaborate with the justice system, police believe he was murdered for breaking the Mafia’s strict code of silence.
Coppola was ambushed by the Camorra assassins on March 12 before they fled – reportedly leaving behind no eyewitnesses.
The Camorra is recognised as one of the oldest and largest criminal organisations in Italy, dating back to the seventh century.
They originated in the region of Campania and grew to power in the 19th century.
The Camorra’s organisational structure is divided into individual groups called ‘clans’ – of which there are believed to be around 180.