Authorities have finally been able to track down and ultimately arrest a former member of the Italian mob, the 53-year-old Marc Feren Claude Biart, somewhere in the Dominican Republic. The arrest was made thanks to the help of YouTube as the mobster uploaded cooking videos showing his unmistakable tattoos.
Mafia fugitive in hiding
Biart was known to be part of the Cacciola clan of the Ndrangheta, which is a Mafia-like organized crime syndicate that is centered outside of Italy's official Calabria region. The group was reported to be the most powerful group ahead of the Cosa Nostra from Sicily and Camorra from Campania.
According to the story by Gizmodo, Biart was able to elude capture back in 2014 when his arrest was ordered over an alleged cocaine trafficking operation that he was tied to in the Netherlands. The former mafia was able to make it to the Dominican Republic and lay low. The Calabria News reported that police said that Biart as well as his spouse were actually considered as foreigners by some of the other Italian expats located in the region.
Tattoos identified in YouTube cooking channel
Biart himself was technically a "ghost" only known as Marc. The duo's joining YouTube channel was initially dedicated to their mutual love of authentic Italian cooking and was far from being kept a secret. Authorities even noted that Biart made sure to leave out his face from the YouTube videos but his tattoos were still spotted. A video clip of him showed only his back and his face is hard to find online. The video can be seen on You News on YouTube.
Other mobsters have already gone down which include mobsters like Francesco Pelle who was found in Portugal on Monday. Pelle was able to live 14 years on the run and was even caught in the feud between both the Nirta-Strangio and Pelle-Romeo gangs. Back in 2007, the gangs culminated in the mass killing of six different men located outside an Italian restaurant that was located in Duisberg, a western German city.
Social media for tracking criminals
It was also reported that the authorities accused Pelle of a particular failed assassination plot directly against the rival boss known as Giovanni Nirta which resulted on Maria Strangio, Nirta's spouse, killed while four others were injured. It isn't really the first time that criminals were caught via social media.
In the UK, an auto theft gang was busted back in 2019 for posting certain photos of stolen cars on social media. In 2013, a Mexican drug lord was actually arrested partly due to his tweets showing photos of firearms, a tiger that was kept as a pet, and even his personal private jet. The recent arrest of Marc, however, shows how keen the authorities were able to identify his tattoo with those that they already have on record. Despite being a small detail, the effectiveness of the tattoo identification ultimately led to his arrest.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
