One of Italy's most wanted men spent 11 years on the run, only to be betrayed by his love for the soccer team he left behind.
The fugitive with alleged Mafia links has been arrested on a Greek island after police said they spotted him there celebrating his team’s being crowned Italian champions.
Vincenzo La Porta, 60, was arrested Friday while he was riding a scooter on the island of Corfu, Italian police said. They said they had been tipped off by a picture of soccer fans at a restaurant on the island celebrating Napoli's triumph this year.
Police said it was La Porta's appearance in the photo, holding a scarf in the sky blue colors of his beloved team, that gave him away.
"Betraying him was his passion for soccer and for the Napoli team," police said in a statement, The Associated Press reported. "With the championship victory, La Porta couldn’t resist celebrating."
The Carabinieri, Italy's paramilitary police force, said La Porta — who was on a list of Italy’s 100 most wanted dangerous suspects — has been convicted in his absence of criminal association, tax evasion and fraud and sentenced to 14 years in jail. Police said he has links to the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate.
Corfu lies to the west of mainland Greece and several hundred miles east of Italy. Although it has recently been hit by extreme heat and wildfires, it remains popular with tourists from across Europe, including Italy.
Italy will seek his extradition so he can serve his prison term. However, he will appeal the extradition.
“We will say he does not want to be extradited,” La Porta’s lawyer, Athanassios Giannakouris, told the AP. “He was sentenced long ago for tax offenses. He has started a new family in Greece. ... He has a 9-year-old boy and is working as a cook to get by. He suffers from heart ailments. If he’s extradited, he and his family will be ruined.”
Napoli was among the dominant teams in Italy in the 1980s, with stars such as Diego Maradona on its roster, but its league title was its first in 33 years.
There have been a series of high-profile arrests of suspects linked to Italian organized crime this year. In May police from cooperating crime agencies across Europe and South America arrested 132 people linked to the 'ndrangheta criminal network.
In February, French police arrested Mafia hitman Edgardo Greco, 63, who had links to the 'ndrangheta and spent 16 years on the run after he was convicted of killing two people in the 1990s. He had been working in a pizza restaurant under an assumed identity.
In January, Italian police arrested the most wanted man in the country, Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who had spent three decades on the run. He is suspected to have been the leader of the Cosa Nostra crime group and was apprehended as he went to a medical clinic in Palermo on the island of Sicily.
