Naples: House sold without the owner's knowledge, but Carabinieri encountered during the exchange.

Naples – If Prince De Curtis were still with us, he'd probably sue the two protagonists of this affair for copyright infringement on Totòtruffa '62. The script was perfect, as was the casting; all that was missing was a happy ending (for them).

A paradoxical comedy of errors unfolded in Fuorigrotta: an apartment was sold, signed, and registered without the rightful owner knowing anything about it.

The script was written by a 44-year-old Neapolitan, Pasquale Presutto, tenant of the apartment in question on Via Cariteo, in the shadow of the Maradona Stadium. He had been paying rent regularly since 2022, a detail that must have reassured the real landlord, a 79-year-old resident of the "upscale" Chiaia district.

The renovation excuse to get the house documents

Under the pretext of wanting to carry out some renovations, the model tenant demanded the delivery of all the property's documents: documents, land registry data, identity card. A complete disaster kit.

This is where criminal genius—or madness, depending on your point of view—comes in. The 44-year-old recruits Nicola Criscuolo, born in 56, a 71-year-old whose job is not just to keep watch, but to act the part of life.

The reason? A striking resemblance to the real, 79-year-old owner. With a cloned ID and the nerve of a seasoned actor, the couple put the apartment on the market.

The price is a real estate "Black Friday" kind: €145. Having quickly found two buyers, convinced they'd made the deal of the century, they go to the notary. Everything goes smoothly: the deed is signed, handshakes are made, and an initial deposit of €95 is received. The house, technically, changes hands without the real owner's knowledge. A bureaucratic masterpiece.

But as we all know, the devil cooks pots and forgets the lids, or in this case, the property inspections. The 79-year-old's nephew, talking to his uncle about the tenant's famous renovations, smells something fishy. He checks the land registry and discovers the unthinkable: his uncle's house no longer belongs to him.

The alarm goes off. The notary, who until then had been an unwitting, paying spectator to the farce, rushes to the Carabinieri at the Chiaia station. Together, they organize the final act of the play. At the appointment for the final payment of 50 euros, in the notary's office, two new "collaborators" show up. They are not novice practitioners, but plainclothes military personnel.

When the scammers reached for the balance, instead of checks, they found handcuffs. The search yielded the perfect con artist's kit: cell phones, notes, notary documents, and counterfeit ID cards. Presutto and Criscuolo were placed under house arrest pending trial. The sale was canceled, the house was safe, and Totò, up there, must have had a laugh.