Italian police finally cracked the code, arresting 'Godfather' accomplices

Eleven henchmen with suspected linked to the "godfather" were arrested on Monday by the Italian police; among them were former mob bosses Matteo Messina Denaro and Vito Gondola. According to reports, the group, which is linked to the fugitive Sicilian Mafia boss, has been using sheep codes to transmit orders and various messages to their henchmen. The arrest was made after police investigations on the messages they followed from 2011 to 2014.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - Denaro, 53, communicated to his men through an old method called "pizzini" - messages, often in cipher, written in bits of paper - and staged everything using a farm in Mazara del Vallo. Then, the messages were passed on to Gondola, 77, who then made the calls to the clan members signaling that a new message was passed.

Men would go for the messages and destroyed them immediately after reading. Tiny bits of paper containing the messages were folded tightly and wrapped in Sellotape and hidden under the dirt and a rock in the middle of a field within the farm.

Some of Vallo's phone calls were cloaked with stuff linked to dairy, sheep and farm like, "I've put the ricotta cheese aside for you, will you come by later?" "The sheep need shearing... the shears need sharpening," and "The hay is ready."

Police have been keeping surveillance of the clan's activities of passing messages between 2011 and 2014 using hidden cameras and microphones. Within the period, the police discovered that the former mob boss Denaro, successor of Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, godfathers now on life sentence, is losing control over the organization.

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