Leave The Pencil, Take The Cannolis

Let our guidance counselor, Luigi Bartolli, offer you a career that you can't refuse.

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 organized 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 gotten 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.

The Mafia clan is also thought to have sold the answers to other applicants for as much as 25,000 euros ($28,000), according to posts on social media.

Story here.