Cocaine and hashish ordered by telephone by inmates of the Velletri prison, but also of other penal institutions in Lazio. Drug doses that cost double the normal market price precisely because they had to be introduced behind the bars, passing the entry controls, hidden in packages for inmates which contain food, including vacuum-packed ones, and clothing for changing. In the end the ring was discovered by the carabinieri of the Velletri company who arrested 33 people, 11 of whom were in prison and the others under house arrest. The drug dealing in prison was documented between January and June 2023.
Turnover of 80 thousand euros
The investigating judge of the Velletri court signed the precautionary custody orders which also concerned 16 people already detained for drug dealing and other crimes, in a couple of cases also extortion towards a subject and his family members who were victims of beatings and threats for not having paid for the drugs. The calculated turnover is around 80 thousand euros. House searches were carried out in all the provinces of Lazio and also in Chieti.
The use of nominees and payments on prepaid cards
The Carabinieri investigators have reconstructed, with the collaboration of the penitentiary police who physically found the narcotic and the cell phones in prison, the organizational chart of the drug dealing group which could count on the complicity not only of relatives of various degrees of the prisoners, but also of frontmen and inmates who acted as intermediaries with the real recipients of the narcotic. The drugs came then paid with top-ups on prepaid cards registered to people who appeared to have no relationship with those involved in drug dealing from outside to inside the prison.
