Fifty-three-year-old Marc Feren Claude Biart was leading a quiet life in the Dominican Republic, one of the countries in the Caribbean for almost seven years. The local Italian community thought he was a “foreigner”. They had no inkling that he was a mafia fugitive.
But the law finally caught up with him. Biart had been on the run since 2014 after prosecutors in Italy ordered his arrest for his involvement in cocaine trafficking for the Cacciola clan of the ’Ndrangheta mafia, The Guardian reported.
And who knew videos on YouTube that didn’t even show his face would lead to his arrest. Yes, he might not have shown his face in his cooking videos, but tattoos were enough for police to catch hold of him.
The police say Biart has been flown down to Milan following his arrest. Before moving to the Dominican nearly five years ago, police said the alleged drug trafficker lived in Costa Rica.
How did police trace him?
In a statement, the police said that it was Biart’s love of Italian cuisine that led to the arrest of the 53-year-old. Besides this, Biart’s tattoos were a major give away, something that helped police recognise and eventually take him under arrest.
“This is an operational success that demonstrates once again that the ‘Ndrangheta is not a Calabrian pandemic nor an Italian one but that it represents a serious threat at an international level,” reads the statement, according to CNN.
Prefect Vittorio Rizzi, deputy director-general of public security and central director of the Italian Criminal Police, told CNN that the group, ‘Ndrangheta, was present in at least 32 countries and 17 of them were in Europe.
In January alone this year, 320 suspected members of the clan appeared before the court facing accusations, including extortion, drug trafficking and theft. This was said to be one of the biggest mafia trials in history.