During the investigations, police discovered that he had constructed tourist resort in Tenerife on the Canary Islands.

In 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for drug trafficking and mafia association.

[1] In July 2009, he was put on the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy of the Italian ministry of the Interior.

[4] He was arrested on 7 November 2009 in a luxury villa in Posillipo, a residential quarter of Naples.

[3][5] Esposito was released from prison in 2017,[6] but was rearrested in September 2019, after a police operation against the Polverino clan.