It began with a tip from a Mafia informant. A smuggling ring was hawking parts for nuclear missiles on the black market, the informer told Italian police. By the time an undercover cop infiltrated the ring two months later, the smugglers were boasting that they could supply uranium from the warheads of the missiles, too. The undercover agent, posing as an Egyptian businessman with links to terrorists, agreed to pay $12.2 million for the first of eight uranium elements the smugglers had to offer. The next day, Feb. 27, 1998, police swooped in as the deal went down in a Rome apartment surrounded by armed men with links to organized crime. Thirteen men were -eventually sentenced to prison.
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