“If you don’t give me the money, I’ll burn down your shop, you’re a scoundrel, if you don’t give me the money I’ll kill your family”. From two episodes of attempted extortion is accused a 40-year-old from the province of Varese, currently detained in CremonaThat on 11 July last year he attempted to extort money from the owners of two premises in Vailate. The accused, assisted by the lawyer Francesca Bianca Maria Ponzoni (who today replaced the trusted lawyer Oscar Bresciani, was sent to trial. The trial for him will open on December 13th.
In a pizzeria he had asked the owner for 50 eurosotherwise he would have burned down his place and killed his family, while in a bar he had asked for 20 euros with the same methods. “Why don’t you want to give me this money?. If I say I burn, I burn.” Thanks to firm will of the ownersthe accused had failed in his aim.
In the pizzeria, the man, resident in a gypsy camp in the area and known for often chasing moneyhe arrived around 9.30pm. “As soon as he entered,” the owner told the police, “he asked me to lend him 50 euros. I refused, telling him that I didn’t have them at the moment. At that point he started threatening me, telling me that he would burn down my shop. I refused, telling him that I would call the police. And he went out and went into the bar next door.”
Ten minutes later the 40-year-old returned to the pizzeria and ordered a beer. “I’ll just have a beer since you don’t want to give me the money,” he told the owner, who replied that he would have to pay for it. “At that point,” said the shopkeeper, “he went into a rage. Initially, raising his voice, he asked me why I had that attitude, then he smashed the beer he was holding against the counter, damaging it. I kicked him out of the shop and called 112.”
The owner of the threatened bar had also turned to the military. “That evening around 8pm a boy who lives in the nomad camp entered my bar and drank a beer, which he paid for regularly.” The defendant then left and returned an hour later. “He was very agitated, and he asked me to lend him 20 euros. He is a customer of my bar and it happened in the past that I lent him money, because he always gave it back to me, but that evening, seeing him agitated, I refused. He started insisting, saying that he would burn my place down. Then he came back apologizing and telling me that he needed those 20 euros because he was in difficulty. This time I gave them to him, telling him it would be the last.”
Sara Pizzorni
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