Description taken from vid

"Antonio Vizzi was hit with a mallet for having opened a shop in Palermo without paying the "pizzo", a tax imposed by the local Mafia on commercial activities amounting, in this case, to 3000 euro.

Vizzi refused to pay, despite the threats, resulting in this brutal assault. The other mafia men can be seen preventing passersby from assisting the victim. Another man who's seen beaten was Vizzi's son in law who was left in a coma for two days after and now has a metal plate in his skull.

Vizzi suffered a broken nose and several facial fractures. Eight people were arrested, including Giuseppe Castelluccio, the head of the local Mafia and the instigator of this vile assault."

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=418_1415719638

Wow. 8 on 2.
Pretty tough.



Cowards.

I seriously doubt anyone passing by was going to try and step in to help out. The mafia has strict rules about that. Even if it's a hit and they botch it up for some reason, if they find out you came to assist the victim, you're in trouble. Their rule is you cannot touch the body. It has to stay as is until carabinieri arrive or a mafioso would come back to finish what was left undone.

Well good for them for standing up for themselves, but unfortunately in Palermo you have no chance of opening shop without paying. They may lower your pizzo but you will pay.

glad I don't live there!

3000? A week or month?

A month.

But on the other hand, nobody messes with your store or business when you're protected, or else the mafia will skin them alive. If not the mafia, local thugs would be robbing them or bothering them.

sounds like a real nice place to live.

I was watching a documentary on Youtube called the mafia's secret bunkers, was about the N'drangheta but about 10 minutes of the doc is in Palermo. Not everyone pays, a lot of shopkeepers/businesses had anti-mafia stickers or something on the front window of they're shops.

They said at one particular market that 2/3's of the stalls paid protection money, even that's crazy.

I have seen a couple of those stickers ('No Pizzo' they say) on shops in Sicily, not only Palermo. They're very few and far between, I'm telling you. Nowhere near "a lot". They get away with that for awhile but eventually everyone pays. If not, your store "catches fire" or something similar.

Yeah, you know better than me. Maybe the producer and the anti-mafia guy in the video were overselling how many don't pay protection money for the cameras.

And i was wondering how effective Adio-Pizzo is...

I think it's safe to say that the ones in charge of "Forza Italia" and Addio Pizzo love to hype things up to seem like they are doing much more for the state than they are.
According to anti-mafia laws, if you're a shop owner and you fail to report that a mafioso came to you to pay tax, you are just as responsible as the mafioso is and can have charges brought against you. Silliness.

Doing that is extreme better to pay his wife a visit when he is not home. So she can explain the facts of life to him when he gets home.

If he had a brain in his head he could probably figured out how to make a lot more thrn 3000 euro's a month from his relation ship with them. He was thinking like a victim. Instead how he can make some money with them.

Broad daylight beating the shit out of someone in front of dozens of people, not the smartest.

Most times they come and give a beating or make a hit in broad daylight.

You'd think they would at least wait for them to shut up shop and give them a beating on there way home or something, I guess doing it in broad daylight infront of a lot of people instills fear...

They rock super skinny jeans when they go smell you for some pizzi. You no he split them when he was doing all that wheeling. You Ne er hear about shacking down bookies over there. Is betting on soccer legal at the corner store and shit. Do they have numbers. I mean there was a bookie around here paying 500 a month plus. Christmas bonus and it worked no one stiffed him and when another guy went to shack him down he got rebuffed

Yeah, better they are like the Americans... 300lbs wearing their XXXL sweatpants breaking a sweat and coming within an inch of a heart attack just to get out of the car and swing a bat at someone.

Your obviously referring to the Bonanno Crew that went down early this year....

The only time you Bust is when you fuckin......the only time you duck is when u running...

They all look the same to me.

So do you think he is paying now?

Hard to say, they got arrested, but somebody will still come after him to pay. It depends on how strong willed a man he is. They won't kill him over it, that's for sure.

Not exactly skinny jeans though were they, just normal jeans with a belt It's European fashion, we naturally dress better

Sicilians dress completely different to American LCN.

As for bookmaking, it's legal right across Europe as far as I'm aware.

I live in an area with a population of about 15,000 and there's at least 15 bookies (shops)

There ya go. All true.

Why wouldn't he put up one of this stickers though? If he doesn't want to pay? To much heat?

I read this article last week or so, in an Italian paper, and from what I understood, he negotiated the price down. Then he still didn't pay the 3000 EU. I guess he was thinking they'd go lower, or I don't know. Maybe he was just late.

3,000 euro, fuck. What kind of business was he running? Must have been making quite a bit of money or they wouldn't sjake him down for so much.

It was the location. Palermo, in the middle of a piazza (which is where it was), will generate a lot of traffic no matter what type of business it is.