Italy's various organised crime syndicates - often lumped together colloquially as Mafia Inc. - are gobbling up gas stations, muscling in on supermarket franchises, making loans to cash-starved businesses, taking over trattorias and acquiring buildings in swank neighborhoods in Rome and Milan, investigators say.

These mobsters have lots of what is in short supply for many businesses these days - liquidity - as well as centuries-honed expertise in preying on the vulnerable, whose ranks are swelling in current financial crisis. It all means the mob is free to sink cash into two areas that lie at the heart of the global meltdown: real estate and credit markets.

The crime syndicates are flush with billions of euros from extortion rackets, drug trafficking and booming sales in fake designer clothing made in China expressly for the Italian mob - an increasingly lucrative trade as hard-hit consumers search for bargains, prosecutors and police said in recent interviews.

For the mob bosses, the global economic meltdown 'is only an advantage,' said anti-mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti, in his office in Naples, the chaotic port city that his home to the Camorra, one of the Italy's major crime syndicates.

Italy has scored some spectacular successes in its decades-long fight against the Mafia, capturing top bosses, persuading turncoats to testify, and encouraging ordinary citizens to resist shakedowns. But the mob keeps growing - and its drive in recent years to grab chunks of legitimate business is paying off big time in the financial crisis.

In Rome, in the high-rent neighborhoods around the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona and Trevi Fountain, mobsters are snapping up real estate, anti-Mafia prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo said in a courthouse interview.

In probes of what Mr Capaldo described as 'indications' that mobsters have taken over hotels, restaurants and cafes in Rome, police seized assets of some of these businesses, although the establishments remain open.

'These places are well run because they want to make money,' Mr Capaldo said. He declined to identify the establishments because the probe is still being conducted, adding only 'you'll find some of them in tourist guide books.' Mr Capaldo's office also confiscated auto dealerships in Rome from suspected Camorristi or their allies.

'The Camorra makes the money here in the south, but it invests it in legal activities up north,' customs and tax police Gen. -- AP