CAMPOBASSO – The Carabinieri arrested a 20-year-old from Campania, on the orders of the investigating judge, for aggravated fraud in competition against an elderly couple.
“During the morning of yesterday, Thursday 9 May, in Naples – we read in a note released by the Prosecutor’s Office –, the soldiers of the local Carabinieri Station Command executed a precautionary custody order in prison, issued by the judge for the preliminary investigations of Campobasso at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Campobasso, against a 20-year-old resident in Campania held responsible for the crime of aggravated fraud in competition against two elderly spouses residing in this
The precautionary custody order constitutes the epilogue of a complex and meticulous investigative activity started at the beginning of 2024, coordinated by the Campobasso Prosecutor’s Office and conducted by the Carabinieri department, in the face of the recrudescent phenomenon of scams against vulnerable subjects, such as precisely, the elderly.
The modus operandi involves an initial telephone contact between the victim and the subject who, presenting himself as a “qualified” operator (for example, as a police marshal, lawyer, employee of the Italian Post Office), expresses the urgent need for him to be immediately handed over of money to help a relative of the victim resolve the most varied misadventures (arrest following an accident, blocking of the bank account, withdrawal of a package) that never actually happened.
The scammers, therefore, by engaging the victim in a telephone conversation, in order to prevent the victim from being able to contact the indicated relative to verify the veracity of the request, and by leveraging the prospect of imminent dangers, induce the victim to hand over the available money or the jewels present in the home of an emissary (a fake employee of a law firm or an employee of the Court), taking advantage of the lack of clarity that such news can generate in particularly vulnerable people.
These methods were adopted by the recipient of the precautionary measure in question who, making use of accomplices not yet identified, after various telephone calls which suggested an imminent arrest of the daughter of the aforementioned spouses, showed up at their home in Campobasso, where deliver gold objects worth around 20-30 thousand euros”.
The incident in question represents the tip of the iceberg of a conduct that increasingly puts the elderly at risk. From the prosecutor’s office of the capital they let it be known that «The widespread contrast to the type of crime that emerges more and more recurrently is among the objectives of the investigators, we take this opportunity to inform the population about the existence of such conduct, as well as about the need to promptly warn the local police forces at numbers 112 and 113, if similar cases occur”.
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