Known as the ‘last godfather’ of the Italian mafia, Matteo Messina Denaro boasted a criminal empire worth £172 million and claimed “I have filled a cemetery single-handedly”.
The mobster moved between 22 luxury resorts, including some in the gangster paradise Costa del Sol, which he owned, and had £8.6million in cash and 26lb of gold ingots.
Denaro spent three decades on the run before finally being captured in 2023 during cancer treatment, months after which he died at the age of 61.
This week, Italian police shared video footage of them seizing “huge amounts of capital” from the late Cosa Nostra chief through a series of daring raids.
Officers wearing riot gear were filmed raiding palm-lined properties, using drones, helicopters and thermal scanners to uncover hidden caves that hid ill-gotten gains.
The dacoit’s corporate holding companies, securities portfolios and eight offshore enterprises used for property investment and asset management were also discovered.
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Denaro, who ran the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in The Godfather films, had a lengthy rap sheet and was sentenced to six life sentences before his death.
Now as authorities struggle to recover his criminal fortune, including “huge sums reinvested in the legal economy”, we look at other notorious ‘Godfathers’ and their vast empires.
‘Hedonistic Playground’
At the peak of ‘King of Cocaine’ Pablo Escobar’s reign, it has been claimed that he was earning $420 million every week from the trade – around $22 billion a year.
There was so much cash that it was impossible for his cartel to launder it quickly, so he had to resort to hiding it in unlikely places, including abandoned warehouses.
A farmer found $600 million in cash inside a blue plastic barrel while digging an irrigation ditch, and Escobar’s nephew found $18 million, satellite phones and a gold pen inside a wall of his family home.
The kingpin’s brother Robert, who was the cartel’s chief accountant, wrote in his memoirs: “Pablo was making so much that every year we would write off 10 percent of the money because rats would eat it in storage or it would be water damaged or lost.”
To keep the pile of cash together he had to spend $2,500 a month on rubber bands.
Sensationally, the Medellín cartel chief, who supplied 80 percent of the world’s cocaine, once lit a fire with $2 million in crumpled bank notes to keep his daughter warm while hiding in the mountains.
One of the strangest legacies of Escobar – who was shot by police and military while attempting to escape from a rooftop in 1993 – brought the hippo to Colombia.
There are now believed to be 200 wild animals, known as ‘cocaine hippos’, descended from animals illegally smuggled out of Africa for his private zoo.
The cocaine kingpin also had elephants, zebras, ostriches, giraffes and camels on his 20 square kilometer estate, which also had a bullring, a private airport and a collection of hovercraft.
The expansive residence and grounds have since been converted into a theme park, named Hacienda Napoles.
Escobar also had a large stake in the Bahamas island of Normans Cay, which became known as a “hedonistic playground” but also hosted a warehouse for drug trafficking.
Carlos Toro, who visited Party Island, claimed to have been sent to pick up naked women and that his party later led to a wild, mischievous escapade.
He added: “It was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Drugs, sex, no police. You made the rules.”
white house mansion
Known as ‘The Dapper Don’, Gambino crime family leader John Gotti refused to be seen in public in anything other than tailored Italian suits, which cost $2,000 a time.
He was known to change outfits by Brioni, Kitaone and Ermenegildo Zegna several times a day and wear them with matching silk ties.
The New Yorker came to power in 1985 after the assassination of Gambino boss Paul Castellano – who had equally lavish tastes, including building a 17-bed mansion. the White HouseWhich had an Olympic size pool and marble statues.
During Gotti’s seven-year reign, the crime family made $200 million.
Law enforcement estimated that during that period he earned between $5 million and $20 million per year from illegal activities including narcotics sales, labor and construction racketeering, illegal gambling, loan sharking, and extortion.
Gotti, who was jailed in 1992 on 13 charges, including five murders, had so much money that he would waste $300,000 in one night playing card games in casinos without a care in the world.
He also had a fortified headquarters in Long Island, which included a hidden room behind a bookshelf containing mobsters’ clothes, and a 6,000-square-foot marble mansion.
strong base
Mexican mobster Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, better known as ‘El Chapo’ meaning ‘the little one’, was one of the world’s largest drug traffickers.
Prosecutors “conservatively” estimated his worth at $12.6 billion after he was caught a third time in 2016 – leading to a life sentence.
During his nearly 30-year reign, his Sinaloa Cartel was responsible for killing 3,000 people and smuggling 661 tons of cocaine into the US in a single year.
To avoid capture, El Chapo had seven interconnected safe houses in Culiacan – with reinforced steel doors and escape routes through underground tunnels.
Some were hidden inside walk-in wardrobes, others under bathtubs and hot tubs.
Photographer Hans-Maximo Musilik, who visited some of El Chapo’s properties, described them as “disorder” and recalled seeing “large coagulated pools of blood” on the floors and bullet-riddled walls.
It has been claimed that El Chapo had ranches in “every single state” in Mexico and homes on “every single beach” – including a lavish $10 million mansion with a private zoo.
The Acapulco beach house had a dock with a “little train” to travel between the lion, tiger and leopard enclosures and a ferry called ‘Chapito’, which means ‘little one’.
Another big expense for the kingpin were his “four to five” mistresses as well as his luxury-loving wife Emma and “cellular youth treatments”, which he flew to Switzerland to receive.
El Chapo also had a fondness for flashy but dangerous weapons, including a gold-plated AK-47 and diamond-encrusted pistols – one with the appearance of a leopard and the other with his initials engraved on the precious mineral.
‘Secret Hideout’
It has been claimed that Al Capone, head of the Chicago Outfit, carried so much of his cash that he requested extra large pockets to hide wads of $100 and $500 bills.
She had a passion for vintage Champagne, flashy diamond jewellery, drove around in seven-ton heavily armored cars and retreated to a prime waterfront mansion in Miami Beach, Florida.
The mobster was so rich that he entered the Guinness World Records in 1927 for the highest annual gross income achieved by a private citizen.
At the time he earned $105 million annually, which is about $1.8 billion today, and he reportedly stashed cash and gold in secret hideouts and safety deposit boxes.
However there is debate over whether his wealth was overestimated – including the discovery of a sealed secret safe belonging to Al Capone in the Lexington Hotel in Chicago.
It was opened on live TV in 1986, but the show’s 30 million viewers were disappointed when some empty bottles were found inside.
Al Capone was dubbed “Public Enemy No. 1” after the St. Valentine’s Massacre of 1929, when seven members of a rival gang were killed in broad daylight.
This prompted authorities to crack down on the operations of mob bosses, including bootlegging, speakeasies, gambling, prostitution and racketeering. In 1931, he was sent to jail on charges of tax evasion.
Just two years earlier, his 1928 ‘bulletproof’ Cadillac Put up for sale at £729,000.
