It’s about the brothers Donato and Leonardo Montroneaged 21 and 24, of Leonardo Fortunatoaged 23, all with police records, and Gaetano Caputo, aged 21: the first three ended up under house arrest, the fourth was ordered to stay home. The investigations, after the diffusion of a video on social media documenting the theft of a Mercedes Glain Santo Spirito, which occurred on 17 January 2023, had a turning point when, on 22 February 2023, the agents identified aAudi RS3.
For the investigators, that car, parked in a building including a house with an adjoining fenced industrial warehouse on provincial road 231, had “the same characteristics of a car that had escaped the checks of the police, even through some dangerous chases”. Subsequent investigations revealed that the car was stolen from a dealership in Casnigo, in the province of Bergamo, on 27 September 2021, with a counterfeit chassis number attached.
The policemen, coordinated by the public prosecutor Lanfranzo Marazia and by the first manager Philip Portuguesethrough electronic tracking with GPS and video surveillance systemhave reconstructed the existence of a solid criminal group dedicated to car theft – mainly SUVs -, and to recycling, which could count on logistical bases (in Palombaio and Bitonto), where it kept the large-engined cars used to commit thefts, frequency inhibitors and burglary tools.
The group was accused of 12 thefts, committed between April and May 2023, between Santo Spirito, Giovinazzo and Molfetta. The cars would then have been cut off, in a few minutes, in the countryside of Bitonto, before being sorted in the north of Bari, towards Cerignola. On the precautionary needs, the judge examined “the data deduced from the criminal episodes” and the “personalities of the suspects, whose behaviors and concrete acts are symptomatic indicators of a nature prone to committing crimes».
Again according to the investigating judge, «the suspects have demonstrated a significant propensity to commit crimetaking into account the peculiar organizational structure developed to carry out the illicit activities and the methodical nature of the operations, as well as – concludes the investigating judge – in the use of a plurality of subjects by the criminal group”.
