A group known as the Marsigliesi clan, commanded by Laudavino De Sanctis and Albert Bergamelli, did exist, and they amassed significant riches and power in the city through kidnappings and small-scale drug trafficking. However, this was an exceptional incident in the city’s mostly monotonous crime scene. For other more established, powerful, and sizable criminal groups, including Cosa Nostra and Camorra, which were both present in Rome at the time, Rome was a territory to be conquered.
Giuseppucci became a member of one of these batteries in the Trullo district in 1974. He quickly rose to the position of group leader due to his charm, aptitude for organization, and inventiveness, which won him recognition from the start. As a result, he was able to establish cordial bonds with other members of various batterie organizations and start to establish himself in the Roman underground.
Giuseppucci loved to gamble as well, and he frequently visited bookmakers to place bets on horse races. He started earning a steady income by charging usurious interest rates of twenty to twenty-five percent on the money he had obtained through robberies. He first encountered Vincenzo Casillo, a lieutenant of Raffaele Cutolo, the leader of Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), inside one of these betting establishments. Raffaele Cutolo’s gang also had an interest in Roman betting establishments.
Giuseppucci resided in a mobile house that was frequently used as a weapon storage facility by members of Batterie and his NAR allies. But the Carabinieri found this hiding location in 1976, and Giuseppucci was arrested and jailed for only a few months before he was freed because prosecutors were persuaded by a broken window in his caravan that the weapons had been planted there by someone else in order to frame him. This turned out to be merely a small setback for him, and he just decided to move the guns to another location while carrying on with his illegal business.
His goal was to form a gang that would rule the whole city of Rome and function without the conventional “pyramid” structure, but rather with each member of the gang being treated equally.
Along with a few of Casillo’s Neapolitan friends, he participated in the kidnapping of jeweler Roberto Giansanti in the same year. Giuseppucci was to observe the victim’s routines while the Camorristi carried out the actual kidnapping. The operation turned out to be significantly less profitable than any of them had anticipated. Due to illness, Giansanti had to be freed after just 52 days, and the eight abductors were paid 350 million lire in ransom—a much smaller amount than the 5 billion they had initially requested.