​Mexican prosecutors say they have charged seven people — including drug kingpin ​Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the country’s former security minister — as part of an investigation into the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. 

​Along with Guzman, ​the former head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, ex-Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna and former top federal police official Luis Cardenas Palomino were hit with weapons trafficking charges, according to a statement released Sunday by the office of Mexico’s attorney general. 

All three are already in custody, either in the US or Mexico.

Guzman is serving a life sentence at a federal “supermax” prison in Colorado. 

As part of the operation that ran from 2009 to 2011, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed criminals to buy weapons with the intention of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. ​

More than 2,000 weapons were tracked crossing the US-Mexican border and many wound up in the hands of cartel members.

Some of the guns were used in gangland slayings, while two weapons found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder in 2010 were traced to “Fast and Furious.”

Luna, who was arrested in Texas in 2019 and faces trial in the US, served as security chief and headed up the Mexican government’s fight against organized crime in former President Felipe Calderon’s administration. 

Palomino, Luna’s right-hand man, was arrested in Mexico in July.

With Post wires

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Police have caught an Italian mafia henchman after spotting the fugitive on Google Maps.

According to the Telegraph, Gioacchino Gammino was convicted of murder and then escaped from prison 20 years ago before ending up in Spain.

He thought he’d escaped the clutches of detectives after nearly two decades on the run – but eagle-eyed cops were able to track him down.

Gammino, 60, was living the quiet life in Spain, where he had set up a fruit and vegetable shop under a false name, the Telegraph reports.

However, detectives were hot on the trail and managed to confirm his whereabouts using images on Google Maps.

A snap of the criminal available on the tool’s Street View feature shows him outside a grocery shop in the town of Galapagar north of Madrid.

The store is named El Huerto de Manu – Manu’s Garden. Since moving to Spain, Gammino had changed his name to Manuel.

Detectives’ suspicions that the man in the image was Gammino grew when they investigated a nearby restaurant called Manu’s Kitchen.

Photos on its official Facebook page showed the fugitive dressed in chef’s whites. They were able to identify him by a distinctive scar on his chain.

A speciality on the menu was listed as “Cena Siciliana” – Sicilian supper.

Gammino was arrested on December 17 but his capture has only now come to light.

He was baffled that he’d been found, reportedly telling his captors: “I haven’t even phoned my family for the last 10 years.”

The crook will be taken back to Italy where he will serve a life sentence for murder.

Gammino was part of a mafia clan from Agrigento in Sicily and has been convicted of a range of crimes, including murder and drug trafficking.

He was listed by the Italian interior ministry as one of the country’s most wanted fugitives.

The crook escaped prison in Rome in 2002 and disappeared without a trace. His arrest is the result of a two-year operation carried out by Italian detectives.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.

This article was originally posted here

A pair of mobsters who conspired to kill Gambino crime boss John Gotti are trying to get sprung — and their fates are inextricably tied to the Trump family.

Louis Manna, 92, and Richard DeSciscio, 79, have been behind bars since being sentenced to 80 and 75 years respectively in 1989 for racketeering and murder conspiracy. Manna had been the consigliere of the Genovese crime family.

The mobsters are now hoping the First Step Act, former President Trump’s landmark criminal justice reform bill, will be their ticket to securing a compassionate early release. The law allows for certain prisoners to be granted early release from federal penitentiaries in an effort to reduce the prison population.

In an ironic twist, both men were put away by presiding Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry — the former president’s older sister — who called the jury’s guilty verdict “courageous” and said the evidence “fairly shrieked of the defendants’ guilt.”

Lawyers for the elderly dons hope the justice system has softened since then.

“Former President Trump’s expansion of the First Step Act was one of his great actions toward criminal justice reform that not only recognizes the importance of a tough-on-crime stance, but also the importance of rehabilitation and reward for good behavior and positive change,” DeSciscio attorney Marco Laracca told The Post.

Laracca said his client was in ill health, citing a past bout with prostate cancer.

Manna’s attorney Jeremy Iandolo — who followed in the long tradition of mob lawyers by denying the existence of La Cosa Nostra — insisted his wheelchair-bound client was no threat to anyone and also deserved compassionate release.

“There is no [alleged] Italian American mobster who has been released under the First Step Act. And this case would set precedent,” Iandolo said. He angrily cited the case of Eddie Cox, 86, who was released earlier this year. Cox — a white man who improbably led the “Black Mafia” of Kansas City during the 1960s and 70s — was linked to 17 murders, the Kansas City Star reported.

So far, things haven’t gone their way. Last month Senior U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan again denied release to Manna stating, “His numerous crimes were extremely serious and heinous.”

Iandolo said he plans an appeal. DeSciscio’s case before the same judge is pending.

This article was originally posted here