3 from Naples Italy, disappear after selling fake equipment to CJNG

Chivis Martinez for Borderland Beat

January 31, 2018, via WhatsApp was the last time anyone heard from three Italian men from Naples. Family members report that 60-year-old Raffaele Russo, his 25-year-old son Antonio Russo and his 29-year-old nephew Vincenzo Cimmino, were in Tecalitlán, Jalisco, on that last day of January when they last spoke to the men.

In the conversation with relatives they relayed that they had been stopped by police that day. 

WhatsApp to Russo’s son Daniele (above)

"Daniele, we were putting gasoline and stopped by the police, two police motorcycles and a police car ordered 'follow us' [...] now we are behind the motorcycles that said 'follow us' [...] and the car is behind us." That was the last communication from the men.

At that point the trio disappeared, along with the two white SUV’s they were aboard. 

That is until this weekend, when Jalisco State Attorney General Raul Sanchez, conducted a news conference to announce that four municipal police officers in Tecalitlan, three men and a woman, “confessed” to “handling the Italians over to members of an organized crime group who operate in the municipality of 13 thousand people.

At a soccer match in Naples a banner was displayed demanding the liberation of the men

Although Sanchez did not name the group, it is CJNG that has control of the area.

It is a fact that any municipality that is a “narco plaza,’ is controlled by whichever cartel has dominance in the area.  This includes city hall and municipal police.  Police are used to pick up people and delivering them to the cartel in charge.  Presumably that is what happened in this case.

Mayor Victor Diaz Contreras stated that this was an “isolated occurrence”.

The officers “confessed” to the abduction, and declared their orders came from the highest command of the Tecalitlán police department.

Sanchez says that both the mayor and police chief are under investigation.  As of now, the Jalisco United force has taken over the police department. Sanchez also stated that Russo was using a false ID, passing himself off as Mexican when checking into hotels, under the name “Carlos Lopez’.

Authorities chastised the family of the missing men for giving them false information that impeded the investigation.  They were projecting the men as simple tourist only in the region  for the day.  As it turns out they had been at a hotel for several days in nearby Ciudad Guzmán.

The family says they were told by authorities, that police from Tecatitlán, would have received a thousand pesos to deliver the Italians to organized crime.  That amounts to 53 USD.

Records indicate that Raffele Russo was arrested three years ago in Campeche, for fraud and corruption, but there is no information as to the disposition of the case.

The men sell equipment and machinery. 

Reports say the goods are “knock-offs” or counterfeit and the goods recently sold was construction tools and also counterfeit plant lights bearing the Bosch, the high end German manufacture.  A family member says the good are manufactured in China.

It is reported knocked-off machinery and “Bosch” plant lights and generators had been sold to CJNG.

Family member concede that Russo has a criminal record but say “just for small things”.  But he did spend three years in an Italian prison for organized crime. 

March in Naples, Italy

However, Italian press reports indicate he is tied to the Italian Mafia and may be involved with money laundering.  Some Mexican media are saying it is not about counterfeits goods, which they can get direct from China, but about drugs specifically Meth.

This was posted on El Universal; “The Russo family belongs to an Italian mafia gang called The Magliari, (the merchants)- Rafaelle spent three years in jail for fraud and at the time of his disappearance was selling fake Bosch machinery in Guadalajara. They suspect he sold fake machinery to the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación.”

The Magliari are dedicated to counterfeiting and fraud.