Faulty information inside the mafia can cost a person’s life

Evidence

Within the mafia there must circulate accurate information. Otherwise no one understands anything, and there is great confusion. My brother ran the risk of being killed, around 1975, by a group of men from Catania who had fled to Milan after a clash with the Pillera gang, because their boss had mistakenly got it into his head that [my brother] had become the boss of the Pillera mob. Three of them left Milan for the purpose of murdering him, and if not for Gerlando Alberti-who pretended to join in and then bumped off two of the killers during a brief stop in Naples-I do not know what would have happened. Faulty information can cost a person’s life. (Arlacchi 1992: 24) Unfortunately there is no sure remedy against lies. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 318

Categorization

• QUESTION: The mistaken-boss case shows information error cascading into lethal violence — what institutional filter could have caught this misinformation before it escalated?