End of a long escape
Google Street View leads investigators to Italian mafia boss
With the help of this photo, the investigators found the person they were looking for. The picture that shows him pixelated together with a bystander can no longer be found on Google Street View
A mafia boss had been on the run for almost 20 years and didn’t even speak to his family on the phone. That didn’t help him – because Google knew where he was.
Google rarely escapes – the search engine’s obsession with collecting data is often the cause of public anger. In this case, however, the precise documentation of the software used around the world gave the police a big catch.
Because Italian investigators succeeded in locating a Sicilian mafia boss with the help of Google’s map service – and finally arrested him. In June 2002, the now 61-year-old Gioacchino Gammino fled an Italian prison, according to media reports, and then went into hiding. International media report that he was one of the 100 most wanted criminals in Italy.
Investigators evaluated a photo on Google Street View
Italian police, who had suspected that Gammino had gone into hiding in Spain for some time, spotted him in a photo from Google Street View last month. The picture showed a man dressed as a cook in the small town of Galapagar. He stood in front of a fruit and vegetable stand, as a spokesman for the anti-mafia police Dia said on Wednesday, according to a dpa report when asked.
By then, the investigators had searched more intensively for Gammino for two years. He is said to have married in Spain and called himself “Manuel” there. His escape came to an end on December 17th: he was arrested by the Spanish police. He was astonished to ask the officials how they found him. “I haven’t even called my family in the past ten years,” he said, according to the Independent.
In modern times, you don’t have to make a phone call to be caught. All you have to do is go outside and be photographed by a Google service.
Gammino worked as a cook in Spain, the reports on his arrest said – and not far from the fruit and vegetable stand where his photo was taken. The restaurant specialized in Sicilian delicacies. What the mafioso probably also fatal was a photo of the cook that the restaurant posted on social media. This is reported by the newspaper “La Repubblica”.
The mafia hunters would have recognized the criminal based on his scar on his chin, it said. This finally enabled them to identify the pixelated person on the Google Street View image.
Gammino’s escape, which had lasted almost 20 years, ended with the access. According to reports, he was able to escape from prison at the time because a tumult arose during a film shoot at the prison, which he used to escape.
He was wanted for mafia association, murder and drug trafficking. In Italy he faces life imprisonment. Gammino – or “Manuel, as the people around him in Spain knew him as – was a member of the Sicilian Stidda. This mafia is considered a competitor to the Cosa Nostra, which is better known internationally.
Source: “The Independent“/ with material from dpa