When you think of the Camorra, you think of Naples and Caserta, in the south. Not of Venice, gondolas and family beach holidays. But according to Italy's courts, a branch of one of the most powerful Camorra clans, the Casalesi, built itself a little empire in the north-east, around the seaside town of Eraclea.
The final word
On Tuesday 6 October 2026, Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, confirmed the sentences. That made them final. No more appeals. Prosecutors in Venice then ordered 24 people taken into custody. Sentences ranged from three to thirty years.
The charges included mafia association, extortion and loan sharking. According to the ruling, the group spent nearly twenty years using threats and mafia methods along the Venetian coast. Local reports say its interests ran from construction to catering, and even into drugs and the exploitation of prostitution.
The case covered seven provinces, from Venice all the way down to Caserta. Police, Carabinieri and the financial police all took part.
The boss who wasn't home
The top name was Luciano Donadio, 60, described as the head of the clan in Eraclea. His sentence: 30 years. On 7 October, police went to his house with the arrest order. He wasn't there. By late evening, he hadn't shown up at any prison and nobody knew where he was.
Most of the others did the sensible thing and turned themselves in at prisons in different cities. His alleged right-hand man, Raffaele Buonanno, gave himself up in Melfi, in the south. Donadio's son, Adriano, was in Padua.
Found by the gate
The disappearance didn't last long. On 12 October, police tracked Donadio down near the prison in Vicenza. According to the report, he was planning to hand himself in there, where one of his sons was already locked up. Detectives from Venice found him using phone taps and old-fashioned investigation, working with teams from Caserta and Vicenza. He was arrested right outside, with prison officers helping.
So the man who vanished from his front door was found at the prison door. Some people really do like to make an entrance.
An Albanian man who also escaped the original round-up was still being looked for, according to the report.
The defence fights on
Donadio's lawyer, Dario Vannetiello, isn't giving up. He says there was "a significant violation of the right of defence". His complaint: Donadio was denied the chance to personally listen to the wiretap recordings at the prosecutors' offices. The lawyer said he's waiting for a Constitutional Court hearing in a similar case, is looking for grounds for a retrial, and hasn't ruled out going to the European Court of Human Rights. For now, though, the sentence stands.
Why this matters
The case is part of a bigger fight against southern crime groups moving north, into the richer economy of north-eastern Italy. The north has money: tourism, building, restaurants. Organised crime follows money, not postcodes.
What it means for you
If you've had a pizza by the beach in the Venetian lagoon, you almost certainly paid an honest restaurant. That's the point of cases like this: to keep it that way. The Mafia rarely looks like the films. It looks like a builder who wins every contract, a loan nobody else would give, or a friendly visit nobody dares refuse. When it works, nobody talks. When people talk, it ends like this: at a prison gate in Vicenza.