As part of an investigation coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, the Carabinieri of the Frignano Station executed an order for the application of precautionary custody issued by the Office of the GIP of the Court of Naples against 4 individuals: two men, aged 28 and 20, and two women aged 50 and 32.
The first is the recipient of custody in prison, the others are restricted to house arrest: they are all seriously suspected, in competition with each other, of the crime of criminal association aimed at fraud, conduct committed on an ongoing basis since 2018 between the provinces of Naples and Caserta.
The measure stems from the immediate investigations launched in February 2018 by the military of the Arma following the receipt of a complaint for fraud filed by the owners of a car resale and rental dealership located in Villa di Briano who displayed advertisements for the sale of luxury cars, at prices well below the market threshold, published on the social network "Facebook" and apparently attributable to the same company that did not recognize ownership. The complainants also reported numerous complaints from alleged customers who complained about the failure to finalize car rental contracts with home delivery stipulated via electronic channels and in exchange for which the latter would have paid, as a deposit, large sums of money through payments on prepaid credit cards or postal current accounts.
The reconstruction of the facts revealed the existence of a fictional Facebook profile in the name of “Lorenzo Mattei” with a telephone number, which was later made available to the suspects, through which the suspects, pretending to be customer procurers on behalf of real car sales and rental companies, lured the victims by inducing them to unduly pay sums of money as a deposit for non-existent car sales or rental contracts, liquidity that flowed, from time to time, onto prepaid credit cards or postal current accounts registered to the suspects themselves, who also held the identity documents used for the negotiations with the injured parties. In order to verify the commission of similar criminal acts by the same group and to contextualize the actual extent of the frauds carried out, the Carabinieri, by carrying out cross-referencing searches in the Database used by the police forces, ascertained the existence of 28 reports, filed in the time frame from 9 March 2018 to 29 January 2019. The illegal conducts represented, both in terms of modus operandi, or rather in terms of the method of commission (transaction of sums of money on the same Postepay cards and same current accounts) and of procuring victims (same telephone numbers used) appeared clearly attributable to the same criminal group. Further investigation revealed that the telephone number used by the fake procurer was available to the suspect in custody in prison, who made direct contact with the victims, indicating to them the steps to follow to complete the sales or rental contracts. In particular, once the documents allegedly useful for the stipulation had been requested and obtained, he provided the coordinates of the prepaid cards or postal current accounts to which the agreed sums of money were to be paid.
The registry checks carried out at the Municipality of Naples have made it possible to ascertain that the criminal association was composed not only of the suspect who ended up in prison, but also of his mother, brother and girlfriend. The members of the family unit were all the holders of the postal current accounts and/or credit cards to which the sums of money subject to undue perception were credited. The full involvement of each of the suspects in the contested crimes is also supported by further elements of evidence, such as for example the interception of video sequences extrapolated from the passive defense systems placed at some post offices that portray them in the act of withdrawing the illicit profits. The investigative activity has allowed us to reconstruct a serious circumstantial framework against the suspects, supported by the GIP: in particular, the existence of a stable and long-lasting partnership cemented by the family bond between the suspects who, with the methods described above, accumulated undue profits estimated at a turnover of approximately 50.000 euros.
