New software helps uncover Mafia crime masked as ordinary business

FOR an inkling of how hard it is for Italian authorities to identify Mafia activity, consider how mobsters disguise the pizzo, or protection payments, they extort. The owner of a business may find that customers have been scared off by a menacing stranger. Within days a mysterious man visits. He may request a regular donation for a poor family, or ask a business to switch to a new supplier. Owners put two and two together, says Daniele Marannano, an anti-Mafia activist in Palermo: “There’s no need for further explanations.”