Sassari Ten convictions, three plea bargains, one referral to trial to face the trial with the ordinary procedure and one acquittal. This is what was established yesterday morning by the preliminary hearing judge Gian Paolo Piana against an alleged gang of fifteen people, almost all from Sassari, who ended up under the magnifying glass of the Sassari Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2018 on charges of money laundering, receiving stolen goods and a series of home burglaries.
The highest sentence yesterday morning was imposed on Davide Melkisentenced to three years and ten months in prison.
The 34-year-old, originally from Tempio, defended by lawyers Andrea Piroddi e Paul Spanohad to answer for a series of thefts committed – according to the investigations carried out by the Flying Squad – in various apartments in the city, some of which with other defendants. Three years and five months were given to David Azzu and two years and ten months to Angel Fadda Mereu. Lighter sentences were handed down to Elizabeth Branca (one year to and ten months), Alessandro Cargiaghe (one year and ten months) Antonio Puggioni (one year and ten months) Fabio Fois (one year and ten months), Claudio Sechi (one year and ten months) Max Daniel Meloni (10 months), Queen Oldani (ten months and 20 days of imprisonment with conditional suspension of sentence) Manolo Times, Valentina Boe e Omar Pintus they agreed to a two-year prison sentence.
However, she was acquitted Maria Grazia Solinas. The referral to trial was instead ordered for Laura Pischedda. The defense team also included the lawyers Mark Palmieri, Massimiliano Tore, Patrizia Marcori.
The sentencing requests were formulated yesterday morning by the public prosecutor Gianni Caria. The investigation by the Flying Squad had lasted two years. Some members of the gang – the investigators had ascertained – broke the windows of apartments that were usually on the first floors of buildings and, once inside the home, they stole jewels.
A modus operandi that was repeated like a script and which had led, starting from the spring of 2018, to a shower of complaints at the police station and also in the police barracks. Four years ago, fifteen notices of the conclusion of preliminary investigations were served on as many people considered responsible, in various capacities, for home burglary, laundering of the proceeds of illicit activity and fraud.
Yesterday in court the charge of money laundering was dropped. The police work began in 2018 when the Sassari police station began to receive numerous reports of home thefts, in the city but also in the hinterland.
The investigators’ attention was immediately focused on the fact that there was an identical type of action. The investigations were oriented towards finding payments for the stolen jewels in gold purchases and this had made it possible to identify a network of characters who gravitated in the world of petty crime in the city, attributable to the perpetrators of the thefts.
At this point the police had started a detailed reconstruction of the suspects’ movements through the careful study of numerous recordings from video surveillance systems. The victims of the thefts were then interviewed and they recognized a large part of the valuables recovered in the gold purchases and subjected to seizure.
