The "travelers" involved in the scam continue to strike along the country's rail lines, but widespread checks are curbing scams targeting the elderly. In the last 48 hours, Railway Police officers at Rome Termini station intervened in two separate incidents, leading to the arrest of a criminal and the recovery of a significant amount of loot.
Fake train accident and escape: the chase from Venice to Rome
The first case involved a family from the province of Pordenone. Using the tried-and-tested "fake accident" technique, a young man convinced two women that a family member urgently needed money and jewelry to avoid legal trouble after a car accident. Having obtained the gold and valuables, the criminal took a taxi to the train station in Venice and boarded a train bound for Naples, convinced he had gotten away with the crime.
What betrayed him were the victims' timely alarm and the public's cooperation: the Carabinieri, analyzing video surveillance footage and a photo taken by the taxi driver himself, precisely identified the convoy. The railway police then monitored the suspect's movements on the onboard monitors, stopping him as soon as the train reached the platform at Rome Termini.
The loot in the backpack and the doors of Regina Coeli
When searched on the spot, the young man was found to be hiding approximately 100 pieces of gold and precious stones in his backpack, weighing a total of nearly 300 grams. These were identified in full and returned to their owners. The fraudster was arrested and transferred to Regina Coeli prison. Investigators are now conducting further investigations to determine his possible involvement in similar incidents in other regions.
A passenger's intuition saves an elderly woman from Trentino.
The previous evening, again at the Rome airport, the Railway Police foiled a scam targeting an 81-year-old woman living in Trentino. Reached by a phone call from a self-styled financial police officer, the woman had been tricked into traveling to Rome with money and valuables to settle an alleged legal debt related to her car.
The eighty-one-year-old was saved by the civic-mindedness of a young passenger who, suspicious of her distressing phone conversations during the journey, alerted the Railway Police. Plainclothes officers took charge of the elderly woman, accompanying her to the meeting point set by the thief. The scammer, realizing the trap set by the police, did not show up. The woman, having escaped the scam, was eventually returned to the care of her family.
Chronicles of Campania
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