Caserta – Modern-day “chicken thieves” still exist, and they work right where they steal.
We're not in the Wild West, but in 2024, yet there are still those who organize to make chickens disappear by the shovelful. The protagonists of this brilliant criminal operation?
Two employees (or former employees, at this point) of a well-known distribution chain, who instead of delivering the goods to supermarkets, loaded them onto their van.
The ingenious strategy: steal where you work
The two—a 37-year-old loading man and a 59-year-old accomplice with the van—thought they had found the perfect business: stealing packaged chickens directly from the Carinaro (Caserta) warehouse and reselling them who knows where. Unfortunately, the company apparently noticed that tons of wings and legs were mysteriously disappearing.
The Caserta Flying Squad caught them red-handed: the youngest man was moving 20 packages of poultry (worth several thousand euros) not to the distribution trucks, but to his friend's van, which then drove off undisturbed from the warehouse. Smart? Yes, but not smart enough.
The blitz and the sad epilogue
Police were ready, a raid was launched, two arrests were made for embezzlement and receiving stolen goods, and the goods (fortunately still frozen) were returned to their rightful owners. Now an investigation is underway to determine how long this "alternative delivery service" had been operating and how many other chickens ended up illegally flying away.
Moral of the story? If you work in a chicken warehouse and start feeling a little too much like the king of smuggling, maybe it's best to change careers. Before the police change your plans... in handcuffs.
It's incredible how some people think they can get away with stealing chickens from the warehouse. I can't understand how they could be so stupid as not to realize that sooner or later they'd be caught. It's an absurd situation.