[2] In the 1960s, Ciro, Lorenzo and Angelo Nuvoletta initially joined the clan of Antonio Maisto who was dealing in contraband cigarettes.

After their early exploits with the Maisto clan, they diversified and became significant landowners using state funds designed to set up small agricultural landholdings.

They made their fortune swindling the Italian government and the European Economic Community (EEC) and intimidating insurance officials, as well as local farmers who took loans from finance companies managed by the Nuvolettas.

[3] During the 1980s the Nuvoletta clan transformed into an international holding investing in agriculture, cleaning contracts, construction, drugs, fraud, stud farming and hotels.

It was formed to contrast the growing power of Raffaele Cutolo's Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO).

He mentioned that these meetings frequently involved representatives of all the major Camorra clans, with usually a hundred people present, many of them fugitives, as well as dozens of cars.

He explained: Our worries arose from the possibility that the police would arrive during our meetings and cause a bloodbath, yet Nuvoletta always managed to calm us down.

Sometimes, when Carmine Alfieri and I looked out at his farmhouse when leaving Vallesana, we saw police cars parked outside Nuvoletta's house.

Lorenzo died in 1994 after a serious illness; Ciro, the most bloodthirsty of the group was killed in 1984 in an armed attack on orders the Alfieri-Bardellino-Galasso.

According to judge Giuseppe Borrelli, they were able to insulate themselves by adopting the cellular structure dominant within the Sicilian Mafia.