A Mafia fugitive is found working as a pizza maker in France after boasting about his cooking skills in a local newspaper

A Mafia fugitive who has been on the run for 17 years after being accused of beating two brothers to death has been found in a pizzeria in France.

Edgardo Greco (63) was caught by Interpol after he bragged about his authentic Italian recipes in a Saint-Etienne newspaper.

The ‘Ndrangheta gangster, known as the ‘prison killer’, has been living in the French city since 2014 after fleeing a 2006 arrest warrant for the murder of two brothers in Calabria.

Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo were lured onto the back of a fishmonger in 1991 and brutally beaten to death with iron bars before their bodies were dissolved in acid.

Interpol, the international police organization based in Lyon, France, said the killings were “part of a ‘mafia war … that marked the beginning of the 1990s’ in Italy”.

His Perna Pranno clan was linked to a killing spree when they fought for supremacy in Calabria in the 1990s.

Jailed for bank robbery, Greco got his nickname after trying to imprison an enemy in the 1980s.

But he disappeared after being accused of double murder before arriving in France under the name Paolo Dimitrio.

He first started as a chef in Lyon and opened his own restaurant before moving to Saint-Etienne in 2014.

Investigators monitored him through his accomplices, but Greco was unaware of their investigations.

He even gave an interview to the local newspaper Le Progres about his experience making pizza.

Italian carabinieri and anti-‘Ndrangheta police officers speak at Interpol headquarters in Lyon

French police, with the help of Italian colleagues, arrested Edgardo Greco in Saint-Etienne, according to an Interpol statement

Investigators monitored him through his accomplices, but Greco was unaware of their investigations

The article read: “A little piece of Italy has just settled at 19 rue Pointe-Cadet.

“This is where Paolo Dimitrio decided to make his dream come true: “To create a refined Italian cuisine made only with fresh and homemade ingredients.”

Agatino Saverio Spoto, an Italian police officer from the Carabinieri, said: “His passion for cooking was one of the elements that betrayed him.”

Based in the tip of the Italian peninsula, the ‘Ndrangheta is one of the most powerful cocaine traffickers in the world and is considered the biggest threat among organized crime syndicates.

In recent years, ‘Ndrangheta gangsters have been arrested across Europe and even in Brazil.

“No matter how hard refugees try to slip into a quiet life abroad, they cannot escape justice forever,” Interpol’s head, Juergen Stock, said in the statement.

Last year, one of Italy’s most wanted gangsters, Giocchino Gammino, was caught after 30 years on the run when he was spotted on Google Street View in Spain.

An Italian mafia fugitive was caught after 20 years on the run after investigators spotted him on Google Maps in Spain (pictured right, at his grocery store).

The gangster, who was convicted of murder, escaped from a prison in Rome in 2002 and lived under the radar in Galapagar, a town north of Madrid.

The 60-year-old changed his name, worked as a chef and opened a fruit and vegetable shop.

Nearby, they found a listing for a restaurant called Cocina de Manu that had been closed for some time.

But the Facebook page was still visible online and shows Gammano posing in his chef’s white attire, and the menu includes a Sicilian specialty for dinner, with a design reminiscent of the iconic black and white poster for the film ” The Godfather” was similar. .

But instead of the puppeteer pulling the strings behind Don Corleone, two hands held a fork and spoon with spaghetti hanging from them.

And earlier this month, mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was caught after 30 years of justice.

Italy’s most wanted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro (centre) was arrested in a private hospital after 30 years on the run

The leader of the notorious Cosa Nostra gang, nicknamed “The Devil” after a series of brutal murders, was caught when armed police raided a private medical facility in Palermo, Sicily, where he was being treated .

The 60-year-old tried to avoid police on foot and went through a series of hospital doors – but got no further than a bar, which was part of the same building where he was checked for colon cancer.

As officers cornered the now-petite crime boss, Messina Denaro humbly told them his name before putting him in a waiting black van in front of shocked patients and medical staff.

Messina Denaro, who strangled a 12-year-old boy and had his body dissolved in acid, was immediately taken by the police to an undisclosed location after his arrest.

Messina Denaro, a perpetrator who reportedly once boasted that he could “fill a cemetery” with his victims, was a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather films.