Italian police have arrested 30 people accused of running an underground bank for organized crime out of a car-rental business near Milan, seizing €21 million (about $23.6 million) in cash, bank balances, cryptocurrency, boats, jewelry and luxury watches, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Wednesday.

The operation was carried out by the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's financial police, on the orders of Milan's anti-mafia prosecutors. It targeted suspects with alleged ties to the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra and organized crime groups from Foggia in southern Italy. Sixteen suspects were taken into custody and 14 were placed under house arrest, including two people arrested in Spain and one in Switzerland.

According to investigators, the business in Pero, on the outskirts of Milan, was run by three Italians: two long-standing contacts of 'Ndrangheta clans from Crotone in Calabria, the southern region where the syndicate is rooted, both previously convicted in earlier mafia investigations, and a member of the Camorra's Casalesi clan. Chinese and Albanian accomplices helped operate the network, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors allege the car-rental business functioned as a "hidden bank" for criminal organizations. Shell companies issued more than €110 million in invoices for services that were never provided, allowing client businesses to cut their tax bills. Those firms paid by bank transfer and received the money back in cash, minus a commission. In total, the network moved about €68 million abroad, according to prosecutors.

Funds gathered in the shell companies' accounts were sent to banks in Luxembourg, Lithuania and Germany, then routed through crypto exchanges into wallets controlled by the network, Bloomberg reported. Drug traffickers who handed over cash received cryptocurrency or international bank transfers in return, and the network also handled money stolen from victims of online crypto investment scams, according to the report. That sequence — conventional bank transfers first, crypto as the final leg into wallets the network controlled — illustrates where traditional finance and digital assets intersect in the alleged laundering chain.

The Guardia di Finanza's technology fraud unit supported the investigation, which is set out in a court order running to more than 500 pages. The inclusion of cryptocurrency among the seized assets shows how such probes now trace value across both banking and digital-asset channels.

The case has also reached inside Italy's institutions. Among those arrested is a Guardia di Finanza inspector, placed under house arrest on corruption charges, according to Calabrian outlet LaC News24. Investigators also accused a Milan court employee of leaking information about ongoing investigations, while a lawyer and a former member of the financial police are among those caught up in the case. All of the suspects are presumed innocent unless the allegations against them are proven in court.

Organized Crime and Crypto

Italian authorities have warned for years that organized crime is adopting digital assets. In 2021, Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate said that "all criminal organizations, including those of the Mafia type, have an interest in using these instruments for their business," and described the 'Ndrangheta, Italy's most powerful criminal syndicate, as "growing more and more attuned to modern tools like cryptocurrency and the deep web." The Pero case falls squarely within that warning.