Elderly Woman Defrauded: A Coordinated Scam Unveiled

The Carabinieri of the Montecatini Terme company have identified and subjected to personal precautionary measures three men seriously suspected of the crimes of aggravated fraud in competition and, for one of them, of burglary committed to the detriment of an elderly woman residing in Pescia. The investigations conducted by the Pescia (Pt) Carabinieri station started immediately when, last October, a lady in her seventies contacted the barracks in a state of strong agitation because she had just been deceived through a complex series of expedients put in place by several people. The woman was first contacted by a man who identified himself as a lawyer who informed the lady that her son had been arrested by the Carabinieri as he had caused a road accident and did not have the money to pay for the damages caused. The scammer informed the elderly victim that to avoid her son's long detention, it was necessary to pay a sum of money and that an official from the law firm would soon arrive at the woman's home to collect the money. A few minutes later, a second scammer, pretending to be a collaborator of the lawyer, showed up at the woman's house and was handed over the sum of about 10,000 euros in cash, just as a further phone call from a third accomplice reassured the woman by inviting her to hand over the money to the collection officer. Immediately after the wrongdoer's exit, the elderly woman contacted her son by phone and only at that moment discovered that she had been the victim of a scam. Once the complaint was filed at the local Carabinieri station, the military began a detailed investigation activity with the acquisition of images from public and private video surveillance systems, examination of telephone records, and collection of testimonial information. This laborious activity allowed the identification of the three suspects and the reconstruction of the route taken by them, who had left in the early hours of the morning from Campania with a rented car and reached Pescia to then return to their region of origin by train. Thanks to the serious indications of guilt collected by the Carabinieri under the direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Pistoia, the Gip of the local Court issued three orders for precautionary custody against the suspects: for all, the accusatory hypothesis is that of aggravated fraud due to having taken advantage of the victim's reduced defense and vulnerability condition, due to age, and for having generated in the person the fear of an imaginary danger. For one of them, the one who was identified as the one who presented himself inside the victim's home, there is also the accusatory hypothesis for the crime of burglary. The latter was reached by the measure of house arrest with electronic bracelet while for the other two the measure imposed is that of the obligation to stay in the Municipality of residence with a prohibition of night outings and the obligation to report to the Judicial Police. Two suspects were traced by the Carabinieri of Pescia in Naples while a third in the province of Florence.