Mafia Fugitive Caught After Appearing in Cooking Videos Posted to YouTube

Brenton Blanchet
·2 min read

Photo by GIANLUCA CHININEA/AFP via Getty Images

A mafia fugitive didn’t hide himself well enough and was caught in the Caribbean after appearing in YouTube cooking videos.

Marc Feren Claude Biart, 53, was on the run for seven years and lived in Boca Chica in the Dominican Republic as an alleged member of the ‘Ndrangheta crime gang. He was eventually found when authorities recognized his tattoos in some culinary clips on the web.

Italian prosecutors had ordered Biart’s arrest back in 2014, when he was wanted for trafficking cocaine into the Netherlands for the Cacciola clan of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia. The ‘Ndrangheta, one of the most powerful crime groups in the world, controls much of the cocaine getting into Europe.

And now, 355 alleged mobsters and officials are being charged in the largest Italian mafia trial in years. The trial, which opened in January and is expected to last two years, includes 900 witnesses, as it took over three hours to even read the names of the defendants at a pre-trial hearing, according to AFP news agency. Charges include murder, drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering.

Additionally, ‘Ndrangheta mobster Francesco Pelle was arrested in Portugal on Monday, according to The Guardian, after being on the run for well-over a decade. He was caught in Lisbon, where he had received COVID treatment, after being a key player in familial feud that led to the murder of six people in 2007.

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