Ferrara is also among the operational headquarters of the criminal group discovered and blocked by the Fiamme Gialle of Treviso dedicated to committing serial scams against leasing companies. The group operated in a large part of Italy with 22 companies involved between the province of Treviso, Lombardy (Bergamo, Brescia and Milan), as well as Venice, Padua, Rovigo, Rome, Caserta, Naples, Chieti and Salerno.
30 people were reported, of which five for the crime of criminal association as they were held responsible for having formed the criminal group with the aim of damaging five leasing companies active in the provinces of Milan, Venice, Siena and Bologna, while all those under investigation fraud is also contested, aggravated by the abuse of work performance.
The fraudulent mechanism, discovered by the investigations of the Fiamme Gialle, was well proven. It involved proposing to leasing companies the purchase of an industrial asset – non-existent – for subsequent leasing to a third party proposed by the same supplier, who would then stipulate the leasing contract for the asset with the leasing company, while the supplier sent the technical documentation and not to the leasing company itself. In the end, however, the leasing contract was not honored, or only the first installments were paid by the tenants, who then disappeared without trace.
The documentation, in particular tests and photographic repertoires, was falsified or altered to make the machinery proposed for sale to the leasing companies appear to actually exist, even with false transport documents that simulated the transfer to the final tenants. There are four companies from Treviso with the role of proposing the sale of non-existent machinery, whose administrators, 10 in total, have also been reported for violations of tax legislation, including failure to declare, issuing and using invoices for non-existent transactions amounting to 3.5 million and evaded VAT of 1.5 million.
The incidents of fraud ascertained by the Fiamme Gialle are 18 in total. Mainly, power generators (but also forklifts, cutters and bagging machines) were fictitiously sold for amounts between 40 and 80 thousand euros, for a total damage to the purchasing companies of one million of approximately euros.
