Mafia may have rigged state exam for prison jobs

For nearly 8,000 young Italians hungry for work, the state exam last month for just 400 jobs as prison guards was a fiasco. For the mafia, it may have been a great opportunity, prosecutors in Rome say.

They are now investigating widespread and organised cheating, with 88 people caught wearing bracelets or mobile phone covers carrying the answers to the test, or with radio transmitters and earpieces thought to have been used to pipe in the answers.

The Camorra mafia north of Naples, based where a company printed the exams, may have got hold of the answers and tried to get its own people inside a prison system that is holding 7,000 gang members, including some 700 bosses, prosecutors say.