A Mafia hitman who fled Italy after being sentenced to life for murder has been seized by police working as a fitness trainer at a luxury spa hotel in Germany.
On-the-run Valerio Salvatore Crivello, 44, was arrested when officers from Germany’s elite State Criminal Police Office stormed the hotel on 4th September.
Crivello is said to have gone into hiding at the EUR 400 (GBP 342)-a-night Benen-Diken-Hof hotel after ditching his electronic ankle tag during his trial in Italy.
The hotel overlooks the Keitum beach on the elite German North Sea island Sylt, where guests are pampered in rural-style thatched cottages.
Police have been hunting Crivello for three years until they got a tip-off that he was working as the hotel’s fitness instructor under a false name.
VIP guests can receive personal health sessions with the gym team and theatre or ballet performances feature most nights at the hotel’s own courtyard theatre.
Crivello worked as part of the hotel’s luxurious Wolkenon Spa, where guests can swim, train or op for massage or sauna treatments.
One of the most popular treats on room service at the five-star hotel is oysters washed down with champagne.
It is a far cry from Crivello’s old life as a ruthless gunman for a Mafia Ndrangheta clan.
In May 2003, Crivello gunned down construction worker Pietro Serpa, 50, during a car chase in Paola, Calabria.
He was also linked with the August 2003 attempted assassination of Giancarlo Gravina, the boss of a rival clan.
The Ndrangheta mafia family is one of the largest in the world with an annual turnover of around EUR 50 billion (GBP 42 billion) from drug and arms trafficking.
After his eventual arrest in 2012, Crivello – who worked as a butcher near Venice – was charged with being a hired killer.
He was released on bail and ordered to wear an electronic ankle tag but fled in November 2020 before he could be jailed.
Carabinieri investigators tracked him down after checking the movements of people close to him using electronic surveillance coordinated by the I-CAN Unit of the Central Directorate of the Criminal Police.
His criminal record shows how he carried out his first hit for his Mafia bosses at the age of 20, working at the heart of the Scofano-Martello-La Rosa clan.
The investigation was part of an operation set up designed to catch the Ndrangheta fugitives.
He is now in custody, awaiting extradition to Italy.
