(NEW YORK) -- The reputed underboss of New York's Gambino crime family was arrested Thursday in Brooklyn.
Francesco Palmieri is wanted in Italy for extortion. About 30 FBI agents and Italian authorities raided his apartment and arrested him as part of a larger crackdown on the mafia in Milan, Matera and New York, Italian police said.
Palmieri was among eight people arrested, including five in Italy and three in the United States, and charged in a blackmail conspiracy. Italian police said the group tried to extort the owner of a climate control systems company in Basilicata in southern Italy out of more than $1 million.
Another man, John Grillo, described by authorities as a "key figure" in the case, was arrested at the airport in Milan just before he boarded a flight to New York on a one-way ticket.
Italian police linked Thursday’s arrests to an investigation that began over a year ago as a follow up to an operation known as "New Bridge." That case closed last February with the arrest of 26 purported mobsters who operated a drug trafficking route between Calabria, Italy, and the United States.