Private firms, crime organizations or states may successfully recruit professionals in misconduct projects. How they do so remains, however, under-investigated. Past studies mostly take professionals' perspective, or limit the organizational initiative of external agents to perverse incentives and threats.The study shows instead how external agents may penetrate governance bodies and professional events to recruit and control professionals, who are both aware of and reluctant toward misconduct. In this case a mafia clan infiltrated the pre-disposed professors inside governance bodies of a university, exploiting a generalized code of silence to control professionals for years.