On July 11, 1979, Giorgio Ambrosoli, the lawyer who was commissioned as liquidator of Sindona's banks, was murdered in Milan. Milanese Councilman Antonio Amati turned the case over to a young judge, Giuliano Turone. It was discovered that Michele Sindona ordered Ambrosoli's murder (which was carried out by an American assassin). At the same time the Mafia killed police superintendent Boris Giuliano in Palermo. He was investigating the Mafia’s heroin trafficking and had contacted Ambrosoli just two weeks before to compare investigations.[4]
While under indictment in the US, Sindona pretended to have been kidnapped in August 1979 to conceal a mysterious 11-week trip to Sicily before his scheduled fraud trial. The brother-in-law of Mafia boss Stefano Bontade, Giacomo Vitale, was one of the persons who organized Sindona’s travel. The real purpose of the kidnapping was to issue thinly-disguised blackmail notes to Sindona’s past political allies – among them Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti – to engineer the rescue of his banks and recover Cosa Nostra’s money.[citation needed]
He threatened Enrico Cuccia, president of the Mediobanca who was opposed to the reorganization/rescue plan.[5] In Palermo, Sindona went to the house of Dr. Joseph Miceli Crimi, an American-Italian doctor and Freemason. Crimi later admitted to the judges that he went to Arezzo to talk with Licio Gelli about Sindona's situation. Licio Gelli then started to interest two judges, Giuliano Turone and Gherardo Colombo.
The plot failed. After his supposed release from the kidnappers Sindona surrendered to the FBI. He was convicted in 1980 in the United States on 65 counts, including fraud, perjury, false bank statements and misappropriation of bank funds. He was represented by one of the nation's leading attorneys, Ivan Fisher. While he was serving time in US Federal Prison, the Italian government applied for the extradition of Sindona back to Italy to stand trial for murder. "The Shark" was sentenced to 25 years in Italian prison on March 27, 1984. On March 18, 1986, he was poisoned with cyanide in his coffee, in his cell at the prison in Voghera while serving a life sentence for the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli.[6]