Police Use Movie To Catch Criminal
Everyone says that things that happen on television or dramatized and never true. In this case they couldn’t be farther from the truth. “Gomorra” is an organized-crime tale and without even meaning to it helped the Italian police find a criminal that they had been searching for.
The movie was screened in a Naples prison. A few of the inmates were related to the things that happened in the movie and recognized one of the actors as being part of the Italian Mafia in Naples.
The actor, credited in the film as Giovanno Venosa, who is reported to be a wanted organized crime figure with a passion for acting, ended up as part of the no-name cast that director Matteo Garrone selected for the film. He tried out in an open audition and won a role.
Police told reporters that they had been tracking him - but would never have found him if the inmates did not alert them to him. He is now being held in a prison near the northern Italian city of Modena.
“We would have never known Venosa was who we were looking for if he had not been recognized by the inmates who saw the film,” a spokesman for the Carabinieri in Naples said in a telephone interview.