Italian mobster caught after posting YouTube cooking videos

Italian police have announced the arrest of a wanted ‘Ndrangheta mobster in the Dominican Republic after he posted multiple cooking videos on YouTube.

After seven years on the run, Marc Feren Claude Biart was tracked down through a YouTube cooking channel he started with his wife; Italian police said in a statement.

The alleged gangster’s “love for Italian cuisine”; and tattoo ink; made his arrest possible, police said.

Though he carefully hid his face; Biart failed to disguise his distinctive body tattoos, they added.

Police said they believe Biart is a member of the notorious ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate; one of the most feared and powerful in Europe; from the Calabria region at the toe of southern Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula.

He had been wanted for allegedly trafficking cocaine from the Netherlands since 2014, police said.

Biart, 53, had been living in the Dominican Republic for the past five years and police said he had been keeping a low profile during his stay in the Caribbean; besides the cooking videos posted to the internet.

He was known to locals as simply “Marc” and kept his distance from the Italian community in the popular tourist destination.

Furthermore, He was a key figure in a feud between ‘Ndrangheta clans that escalated in 2007 with the Duisburg killings in western Germany; which left six people dead.

Those killings were a reprisal; for an order, Pelle gave to murder a mobster’s wife to avenge a shooting in which he lost the use of his legs.

He had been sentenced to life in prison for the murder but went into hiding in 2019; when Italy’s top appeals court confirmed the jail term.

In a separate incident on Monday; another ‘Ndrangheta mobster was arrested at a clinic in Lisbon, Portugal; where he was being treated for the coronavirus, local media reports say.