As far as undercover operations go, this one looks top shelf — one of the largest and most
ambitious covert stings in years, spanning Italy, Spain, Colombia, the Balkans and the United States
These brokers — who found themselves in the middle between astonishing loads from a Colombian cartel,
going to an international network of distributors across Europe — seemed perfect
They had a back door, you see, into a major Italian port, an efficient discreet way to
secretly slip tons of high-value product ashore and then whisk it away: north south east and west
There was only one problem. It was all a setup, a sting, a great big trap
The Mob Reporter here with a story of covert duplicity that tricked narcos around the world
for more than a year, sending their product straight into the waiting arms of police
all the time thinking they had a bright new underworld ally. Hang on, this one is quite a ride
Let me tell you about it
By the end of it all, police snagged 4.3 tons of coke, sent out by Colombia's powerful cartel
the Clan del Golfo. This operation began in April 2021 with Italy's Guardia di Finanza, a national
police agency specializing in financial crime, working with Colombian National
Police and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. Spain's National Police then joined the party
Two Italian agents pretending to be well-connected gangster middlemen were introduced to the Clan del
Golfo by a Colombian cooperator. The undercover agents said they had infiltrated the port of
Trieste and were opening it up for gangland business. Trieste was a great spot for that. It's
in northern Italy on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, in the heart of Europe. It's port is one of Italy's
busiest and it's a maritime gateway to northern Italy, Central and Western Europe and the Balkans
You can see why importers would love the place. One of the Italian prosecutors who helped oversee
the operation described the premise of the sting like this, he said: "In Colombia they were looking
for a safe hub for cocaine and we managed to make people believe that Trieste was the place."
The cartel bought that hook, line and sinker. Colombian officials say the Clan del Golfo,
now allegedly under the leadership of a man known as Chiquito Malo
transferred 4,300 kilos of tightly wrapped and packed bricks of cocaine. The cartel thought it was
traveling to Trieste by sea, hidden in shipments of machinery. Those ships did make it to Trieste
and the machinery unloaded there, but unknown to the cartel, the bricks were never on board
The cartel first entrusted the undercover agents with 300 kilos as a test run. Authorities diverted
that load in Puerto Bolívar, a Colombian port on the Caribbean, and secretly moved it across the
Atlantic by plane instead, in the care and control of military and police. That first flight took
it to Madrid in Spain and then on to Marco Polo airport in Venice, and then driven to Trieste where
it was turned over to the cartel's man in Italy, who confirmed to his bosses the new brokers could do
what they promised. He gave their new partners a 15 kilo tip. Once the cartel was satisfied their
test was a success, they opened the floodgates. Four more tons. Most of this was apparently
earmarked for the 'Ndrangheta, powerful mobsters from the southern Italian region of Calabria
These enormous stashes were diverted in Colombia and loaded onto a military plane that landed at
Rivolto Air Base. This provided utmost privacy as an Italian air force facility exclusively for
military use. Police didn't announce the seizure, though. They kept it top secret. They didn't want
to catch just one player in the hyperactive race to flood Europe with coke. They wanted to catch all
of them; more realistically, as many as they could handle. And in Italy, distributors came calling. They
came with trust. All of them had done business with the Colombians before and the new Trieste
brokers came with a firm referral from the cartel. To accommodate the orders, a network of undercover
police set up their own fake smuggling operation. From the Trieste port there were fake warehouses
fake companies, fake documents, fake shipping orders, and fake narcos. Some buyers wanted a test delivery
first just to be sure. We see one of those meetings here: a one kilo proof of concept passed to a buyer
in a resort town an hour's drive along the coast from Trieste. This operation played out for more
than a year until it was revealed on June 6, 2022. The problem for police was that as the middlemen
the undercover cops didn't always know who the buyers were. To flush them out they arranged for
portions of their monster load to be sporadically released to buyers in controlled deliveries and
then intercepted by police. There were 19 of these controlled deliveries, authorities said. From May
2021 to May 2022, each bust they did was as far away from Trieste as they could manage, to avoid
suspicious fingers pointing back at the undercover cops. Police made sure each of their discoveries
of the loads looked like a happy accident, rather than part of a wider police operation
This meant not only lying to the narcos, but lying to the media and local public officials as well
The first load police recaptured was in May 2021. There was supposedly a suspected gas leak reported
at an abandoned building in Aiello del Friuli, about an hour's drive northwest from Trieste
Firefighters asked the Guaradia di Finanza to help them track down the building's owners
reporters were told the next day. Those officers who arrived happened to have a drug sniffing dog
with them, who alerted them to five cardboard boxes inside and — wonder of wonders — they saw they were
filled with bricks of coke, about 100 kilos. At the public announcement of the supposedly unexpected
discovery, police put on a bit of a dog and pony show. Police made sure to tell reporters the name
of the hero dog — it was "Ghiom." If you ever want to distract attention, bring out a dog. "Woof! Woof!" Good boy.
That pattern repeated itself over and over throughout the next year. In November 2021, police pretended a
construction contractor's van was pulled over in Verona, a three hours drive west of Trieste
because of a burnt out headlight. That white van was pulled over by police after passing through
a highway toll booth and was carrying toilets and sinks and other plumbing supplies. Police said at
the time they searched the van because the driver didn't have transportation documents for his load
Underneath the plumbing supplies police found 300 bricks of coke, weighing 355 kilos. Town officials
publicly praised the attentiveness of police to local reporters the day after. I doubt they were in
on the lie, they were just duped like everyone else. about the same time, it was another routine traffic
patrol on the A1 near Arezzo, more than five hours from Trieste, down in Tuscany. They spotted a white
van making an unsafe lane change, police told the media the next day. The van was carrying masonry
tools, but the Albanian driver seemed overly agitated so traffic cops called in the Guardia
di Finanza to investigate possible black market construction activity, so the story was told. In the
back of the van officers were seemingly shocked to find stacks of bricks — that's bricks of coke not
the masonry kind. There were 400 of them, weighing 476 kilos. In Palmanova, police were mysteriously
called about a Mercedes van in a shopping center's parking lot. That van was apparently
suspicious because it moved several times to different spots, police said when announcing this
miraculous discovery. When officers arrived they saw the van's driver pass something into a large
Audi with German license plates. Police pounced and caught both vehicles and arrested both drivers
and a passenger; all were Croatians. Under a false bottom in the van were 55 kilos and a lot of cash
The largest single controlled delivery was recaptured outside Rome in January 2022. A large
truck was preparing to unload at a warehouse when it was stopped by police. The story this time was
that an officer became suspicious of the movement of the truck which was registered in Slovenia
Inside the truck, behind spare car parts, officers were shocked — shocked, I tell ya — to discover 600
bricks weighing 680 kilos. Two men in the truck were arrested, a Bulgarian and an Italian. The last
controlled delivery was in May 2022, one year after the first. This time it was an alert police patrol
officer near beautiful Lake Bracciano, in Lazio, northwest of Rome, who spotted a beat-up car riding
low in the back, as if from excess weight. The car was followed to an abandoned restaurant where
two men started lugging bags from the car inside. Officers swarmed in arresting both an Italian and
an Albanian and seizing 167 kilos. The entire caper was codenamed "Operation Geppo." Italian police like
irony and enjoy wordplay. Geppo is the name of an old Italian comic book character who was a demon
but a good-hearted one, who acted as a bad guy but ended up always disrupting the devil's evil plans
Geppo in the comic books had the horns and wings of a bad guy, but the heart of a good guy
Kind of like the undercover officers, police are telling us, looking and acting like narcos but
really just ruining the real narcos plans. Police say the arrests hit four criminal networks in
Europe. There were 38 people named in arrest warrants: 20 of them in Colombia, 10 of them
in Italy, the rest in Albania, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. Dozens more are
wanted including suspects in Serbia and Albania. All allegations have yet to be tested in court
Authorities have said several of those arrested are now cooperating with the prosecution. This
will be interesting to see how it all plays out in court. Thanks for watching and please subscribe