An ingenious scam to the detriment of hundreds of young people and the state led to the arrest of a man resident in Rocca San Felice, in the province of Avellino.
The man, who ended up under house arrest, is accused of having stolen over 300 thousand euros in vouchers intended for the culture bonus, a benefit promoted by the Ministry of Culture and managed through Consap Spa.
The scam, cunningly orchestrated, involved 837 young people, mostly very young or just over XNUMX, to whom the man had promised to convert the culture bonus into cash.
To do this, he convinced them to register on the official application “18App” or on a website created specifically by him. Once they had obtained the vouchers, instead of keeping his promise, he cashed them in for himself, transferring the proceeds to current accounts in his name at foreign banks via bank transfers.
The investigations, coordinated by the chief prosecutor Domenico Airoma, allowed the fraudulent system to be unmasked, culminating with the issuing of a precautionary custody order signed by the investigating judge of the Court of Avellino.
The man will now have to answer to the charge of aggravated fraud in order to obtain public funds, a crime that highlights the vulnerability of initiatives such as the culture bonus if not adequately supervised.
This story is very worrying and makes us think about how easy it is to fall into such traps. The authorities should pay more attention to these systems to prevent other people from being deceived like the young people involved.