Raffaele Imperiale was born in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy. His father owned Società Sportiva Juve Stabia, an Italian football club based in Castellammare di Stabia.

Imperiale is also known as Lelluccio Ferrarelle. Here are 10 more things about him:

.

  1. When he was young, he managed to escape and return home safely after being the victim of an attempted kidnapping.
  2. In the 1990s, he moved from Italy to the Netherlands and managed the Rockland coffeeshop in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which was owned by his older brother. The coffeeshop also sold marijuana.
  3. His older brother who bequeathed him the Rockland coffeeshop died in 1996.
  4. In the early 2000s, he started as an international broker in the drug trade, according to Italian investigators.
  5. Vincent van Gogh paintings View of the Sea at Scheveningen, made in 1882, and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, made from 1884 to 1885, were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002 and were recovered in 2016 in a villa in Castellammare di Stabia, which he owned. He allegedly bought the paintings using drug money.
  6. In January 2016, the interior ministry of Italy issued a warrant for his arrest for international drug trafficking as part of organized crime activity.
  7. Also in 2016, he moved from Amsterdam to Madrid, Spain then to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
  8. He, Ridouan Taghi, Daniel Kinahan and Edin Gačanin headed a super drug cartel that had meetings in the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai in 2017.
  9. On August 4, 2021, he was arrested in Dubai.
  10. He was 46 years old when he was arrested on August 4, 2021.

 This post is ad-supported
​