Kids in trouble for shopping sprees with stolen cards: cigarettes, taxis and ice cream

Imola (Bologna), 17 April 2024 – Electronic and ‘traditional’ cigarettes, kebabs, taxis, ice cream and online purchases with the PlayStation. All with stolen credit and postepay cards. But the ‘crazy expenses’ of two minors of foreign origin – the type of purchases would almost make one smile if they were not the result of a crime – lasted less than two hours and ended with a double complaint for two sixteen-year-olds by the police.

Both for ‘undue use of means of payment’ and a boy also got into trouble for receiving stolen goods. Furthermore, the two were already known to the police, the first for residential burglary, robbery, personal injury, spending counterfeit banknotes, the second for robbery.

The story has begun a few evenings ago around midnight when a woman called 112. She had gone to pick up her daughter from a friend’s house and had left her bag in the car. When she returned she found the lock broken and the wallet containing 285 euros in cash and cards missing. In the meantime, some messages had arrived on her phone, because someone was making several small purchases with her credit card and debit card, which were possible even without having the pin. Payments began around 10.52pm.

There police she managed quickly to reconstruct the movements and payments made by young people. They identified the taxi driver who had accompanied them to Pedagna and who provided a description of them and then an ice cream shop, a bar, a community center, where the two had done ‘crazy shopping’.

Right on Pedagna the two were intercepted by the police car. The boys, not at all cooperative, were taken to the police station. In all – according to what was reconstructed by the police – the boys tried to carry out 11 operations, including one for 300 euros which was unsuccessful. In total they spent 130 euros. The two boys also had cash with them, one had 115 euros and one 50, as well as electronic cigarettes. One of the two also had the health insurance card of a girl born in Bologna who had been reported missing: it is believed she was used to buy cigarettes.

The stolen cards (which in the meantime had been blocked) were not found. The two very young people said that they had not stolen them, that they had found them and, realizing what they had done, that they had thrown them into a manhole in Pedagnawhich however was checked and found empty.