Today the ‘Ndrangheta, Calabria’s clan-based Mafia, is one of the world’s richest and most powerful drug trafficking organizations, worth an estimated $55 billion. But it wasn’t always like that. From the 1960s, as European politics went mad, the group glommed onto a new fad taking Italy by storm: kidnapping. And it got them the capital to get into property, cigarette smuggling, and cocaine.

But they were far from gentleman thieves. The ‘Ndrangheta’s kidnapping streak cost lives, outraged the Italian public, and kicked off a feud between rival clans than continues spilling blood to this day.

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