To buyers this practice is often presented as a safeguard against the risk of cheating: "Buy from A (or sell to A) and you will be safe. Just let A know I sent you." But when the practice works, it is irrelevant whether customers buy from A or B since neither A nor B will steal the other's customers; instead they will agree "not to accept or seek business from customers who [are] currently served by another member" of the cartel (Reuter 1987: 28). What happens if the agreement is breached is easy to guess. Vincenzo Sinagra testified that the brother of a man "who had taken the liberty of selling construction supplies to somebody else's customer was violently beaten (VS: I, 138). Customers effectively become part of the supplier's assets; they are thus internalized and can be traded like any other form of property.

XREF: Relates to economic theory on market structure, cartel behavior, and the internalization of customer relationships as assets.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 526