A Neapolitan crooner and his wife, widow of a Camorra godfather, were arrested Tuesday in Naples with 25 other people during a crackdown on the mafia organization, the carabinieri announced.
Antonio “Tony” Colombo, 37 years old, successful singer, former candidate for the Italian version of the telecrochet show Dancing with the Stars, and his wife Tina Rispoli, 45 years old, are suspected of having linked their interests to those of Marco Di Lauro’s clan, a powerful “boss” arrested in 2019 after 14 years on the run. The clan has notably invested in the ready-to-wear sector, creating, with the Colombo-Rispoli couple, the “Corleone” brand, named after the famous Sicilian mafia dynasty. Still in the same spirit, they launched an energy drink called “9 mm”, a common handgun caliber frequently used in the industry.
Tony Colombo announced his artistic retirement in 2020. His latest title, Ti aspetto all’Altare (I’m waiting for you at the altar), has nearly 60 million views on YouTube. In 2019, he married Tina Rispoli, widow of Gaetano Marino, a mafioso murdered in 2012 who had declared war on… Paolo di Lauro, Marco’s own father and founder of the clan.
The 27 accused, including a driver from the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office, are being prosecuted for mafia association, extortion, violence, rigged auctions and tobacco smuggling. In a long press release, the carabinieri detail the new “entrepreneurial” activities of the Di Lauro clan and its “almost total” renunciation of arms after the wars between factions for the control of drug trafficking which bloodied the southern metropolis of the peninsula for decades during.
Renunciation of weapons but not of violence since, in addition to retail trading, they specialized in legal auction fraud by threatening candidates so that they withdraw from the auction. Once the property was acquired, they resold it at the market price, realizing a substantial capital gain. Thanks to front men, they also bought sports and betting halls as well as supermarkets and were at the head of trafficking in cigarettes imported from Bulgaria and Ukraine, contraband in which the singer and His wife.
The clan had also reached an agreement with the “Licciardi” and “Vinella Grassi” clans to share the auction awards and to “revoke the extortions carried out by other criminal organizations and targeting its own companies”. Nearly eight million euros of movable and immovable property were seized.
