Naples, they stole credit cards sent by mail: 14 precautionary measures. With “social engineering” and “spoofing” techniques they defrauded banks and customers, managing to obtain hundreds of thousands of euros from credit cards intercepted before reaching the recipients.
In the early hours of this morning, the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit of Verbania, together with their colleagues from the Provincial Commands of Naples, Caserta and Bologna, at the conclusion of the “INCOGNITO” investigation, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, executed 14 precautionary measures issued by the GIP at the Court of Naples against an equal number of Italian individuals, seriously suspected of the crimes of criminal association aimed at receiving stolen goods and the improper use, after activation with fraudulent methods, of credit/debit cards of illicit origin.
The investigation was launched in March 2019 following the execution, in Naples, of a precautionary detention measure against one of those responsible for the armed robbery at the post office in Nonio (VB) in December 2018. During the house search, the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit of Verbania had in fact found a credit card registered to a woman from northern Italy, completely unrelated to the arrested subject.
Realizing the importance of this discovery and developing immediate and in-depth investigations, it emerged that the credit card, bearing a false signature and never reaching the owner, had been used in a Slovenian casino; further verification allowed to ascertain that the same had been stolen, at the end of January 2019 and together with many others of the same batch, from the Centro Meccanizzato Postale di Milano Roserio.
Analyzing the movements of all the credit cards in that batch, it emerged that many had been used improperly at Slovenian casinos as well as Italian public establishments or ATMs.
Given the characteristics and dimensions of the phenomenon, both in terms of the number of cards used and the amounts withdrawn, the existence of a well-structured organisation capable of managing an illicit activity of such a high profile was assumed.
The investigation activities, coordinated and directed by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, Seventh Section, developed using both technical and traditional activities and also thanks to the collaboration of the Slovenian and Swiss Police Forces, have therefore allowed us to reveal the complex mechanism underlying the illicit activities.
The facts ascertained in Slovenia, in fact, were nothing more than episodes inserted in a much broader criminal context, within which the members of the criminal group, organized in a professional manner, were accustomed to carrying out each one of their own pre-assigned tasks and always aimed at using the stolen credit cards.
Once the availability of the cards, systematically stolen from Mechanized Postal Centers located throughout Italy, began the phase of acquiring sensitive data on the account of the unaware customers, recipients of the "intercepted" correspondence; this allowed the criminals to achieve the final objective of the association: the undue profit given by the use of the stolen credit titles.
To achieve their goal, the associates had created a highly organized “structure” in which some individuals, who operated from inside a room used as an “office” located in Naples, used “social engineering” methods to contact the recipients of the cards, as well as public offices, banks and financial institutions, trying to obtain the confidential data necessary to activate and use the credit cards they had available. To deceive the various interlocutors, programs were also used that modified the caller’s telephone number (so-called “spoofing”), so as to make the customer believe that the call was coming from the bank and vice versa. One of these software programs is called “Incognito” and gave its name to this investigation.
Once the data was obtained and the cards were activated, other individuals began to use them, both in Naples and in other areas of Italy and even abroad (Slovenia and Switzerland), monetizing their respective credit limits as much as possible. In particular, in addition to withdrawals at ATMs and purchases in boutiques or shopping centers, the individuals went to foreign casinos where, showing false documents corresponding to the credit cards, they purchased chips for thousands of euros, which were then returned shortly after, thus obtaining cash. The group also included a woman who, pretending to be the wife of one of the criminals, used credit cards registered to female individuals and allowed them to pass the controls more easily.
Since the criminals were also able to bypass the security systems (SMS alerts and/or notifications of completed transactions) activated by the banks/financial institutions, the unsuspecting customers often became aware of the improper use, even up to over 6.000 euros, only upon receiving the account statement, after which they had no choice but to report the incident.
The investigation activity, conducted by the Investigative Unit of the Carabinieri of Verbania with the coordination of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, continued uninterruptedly for over 8 months and allowed to reconstruct the organizational chart of the criminal association and document 133 criminal events, committed from January to May 2019, to the detriment of 122 injured parties and for a total sum of several hundred thousand euros. During the investigation, 220 credit cards of illicit origin and 7.450 euros in cash were also found and seized.
The precautionary measures in question, 10 of which applied custody in prison, one imposed the obligation to remain in the same residence and another imposed a ban on remaining in the same residence, affected the following suspects:
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ESESPOSITO Maurizio, born in 1974, in prison;
– ESPOSITO Salvatore, born in 1997, in prison;
– SACRA Pasquale, born in 1987, in prison;
– ACAMPA Ciro, cl. 1987, custody in prison;
– DE MARTINO Michele, born in 1992, in prison;
– PICCOLO Nicola, born in 1998, in prison;
– ZAMPINO Antonio, born in 1991, in prison;
– DI MARTINO Raffaele, born in 1990, in prison;
– CARANDENTE Gianndiego, born in 1982, in prison;
– FABOZZI Mauro, born in 1963, in prison;
– RUBERTI Sabatino, born in 1987, prohibited from residing in the municipalities of the Campania Region.
The activity is still ongoing
Article published on 1 July 2020 - 07:18
