"Virginia Hill, a woman sent to Mexico by the Cosa Nostra, infiltrated the highest levels of the Mexican government in the post-war period and turned that country into a large-scale supplier of drugs to the United States, journalist and writer Juan Alberto Cedillo told Efe . "Mexico became one of the main suppliers of drugs in the 1940s for the consumers of its powerful neighbor to the north and this beautiful woman was the key piece in this adventure," Cedillo said during a discussion of his new book, 'La Cosa Nostra en Mexico (1938-1950),' published by Grijalbo Mondadori. Hill, who was the girlfriend of mobsters Joe Epstein, Frank Nitti, Charles Fischetti, Frank Costello and Joe Adonis, was sent to Mexico by the Cosa Nostra, the most powerful of the Italian-American organized crime groups operating in the United States, to obtain protection for its drug business, Cedillo said in the article.