Fuel in Italy is reaching truly prohibitive costs. For example, petrol currently has an average price in our country of over 1.85 with peaks reaching and exceeding even 2 euros per litre. Data that is seriously bringing entire families to their knees.
The increase in fuel prices, in fact, has a frightening cascade effect. Most of the raw materials and the food that reaches our table are transported by truck. The more fuel costs transport companies will have to face the final price will increase of the product that we are going to buy in the store and this applies to practically everything. When these heavy price increases occur due to the cutting of oil barrels, unpleasant situations are often created with people trying to profit from people’s desperation with less than legitimate means. This is more or less what happened in the story we are about to tell you.
Transnational organization defeated
The Carabinieri of the Trento judicial police continued Operation “Free Fuel” which had as its epilogue that of triggering precautionary measures against 27 people. Added to this is also a huge seizure of assets with a value exceeding 150,000 euros. The operational core of the Cavalese company and the collateral bodies of Romania and Spain also participated in the operation.
In fact, a transnational criminal organization was identified that managed to generate profits for more than that 15,000 euros per week. At the center of their shady dealings was a ring of cloned cards and fuel stolen from distributors. The stolen fuel was then resold clandestinely at the “advantageous” price of 1 euro per litre.
How they were discovered
The crime came to light due to some suspicious situations. Enilive Spa, Eni’s new brand on sustainable mobility, in fact, had filed a complaint because it had found itself with withdrawals far higher than the usual routine by some companies through fuel cards. In particular, following this complaint, some distributors in Trento, Mezzocorona and Lavis were identified, where these anomalous flows occur.
At that point the criminals practically ended up trapped. Day after day, the investigators reconstructed the organization with its leaders before proceeding with action. According to investigators, the gang was responsible for installing skimmers who arrived from Romania and they were able to read credit card data. Once this data was stored through this tool, cloned fuel cards worth 2,000 euros were created. These were then in turn resold to third parties or used to collect fuel practically free of charge. In short, a shady business that defrauded several distributors in the province of Trento.
The fuel taken was then stored at a Lavis warehouse in non-compliant vans and containers. At that point the same fuel was resold at rock-bottom prices to users who were well aware of the fraudulent origin of the goods received. All this also had considerable dangers given that the fuel was kept in a situation that was not up to standard.
