VENICE – The problem is well known in Venice: the plague of fake deaf people who approach tourists to ask for donations and collect signatures for fake charity projects, taking the opportunity to “lighten” the unfortunate ones. The scammers often operate in pairs and everything takes place in church, without consideration for the sacredness of the place or the attempts of the sacristans and parish priests to remove them. Between Friday afternoon and Saturday the local police in Venice identified two Romanian citizens who approached tourists inside the church of San Salvador with the classic folder for collecting signatures, one of the tricks most commonly used by these scammers, who distract their victims while they take the money out of his wallet. The officers followed the two subjects inside the sanctuary, stopping them in flagrante delicto. The municipal police seized the material and the subjects were ordered to Daspo urban.
One of these would be a Romanian citizen in his 50s, described by the sacristans as “a big man”, who last year had stolen 300 euros from an American. These would be two faces known to the sacristans and to Don Roberto Donadoni, parish priest of San Salvador, San Zulian, San Moisè, San Zaccaria and Santa Maria del Giglio. Both had been denounced several times by Don Roberto. The church of San Salvador is plastered with signs inviting tourists not to trust people who approach them by pretending to be deaf and asking for donations. Furthermore, the church is under video surveillance: Don Roberto, in the past, had also hung the “mug” photos of the most recidivist fraudsters. A gesture that had also earned him intimidation from these people: «One of them mimed the gesture of cutting the throat, even my sacristans were threatened. In the parishes I follow there will be at least a dozen of them, they are now well-known faces. We know those who were stopped yesterday, they were caught red-handed in church and taken out by the officers. Some of them could even be minors, they are very young.” The cameras in San Salvador also recorded the officers stopping the two scammers, who had already identified two tourists to rob. Furthermore, yesterday the local police stopped a pickpocket in San Marco and a pickpocket at the station; they were both reported.
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VENICE – The problem is well known in Venice: the plague of fake deaf people who approach tourists to ask for offers and collect signatures for fake charity projects, seizing…
