A real operation with a high investigative impact led the State Police to the flagrant arrest of two people held responsible for a scam against an elderly woman, orchestrated with the proven scheme of the so-called “gang of fake carabinieri”.
Everything took place under the investigative direction and direct coordination of the Barcelona prosecutor Giuseppe Verzera, as part of an activity aimed at combating scams against the weakest sections of the population.
According to what was reconstructed by the investigators, the two subjects – a man and a woman, both originally from the Catania area – would have implemented a scam as simple as it was insidious: pretending to belong to the Carabinieri, they would have contacted an elderly woman convincing her of the need for alleged “judicial police findings”.
With an authoritarian and highly persuasive tone, the fake soldiers would have induced the victim to hand over cash and jewels, for a total value of around two thousand euros, claiming that they were urgent checks linked to phantom ongoing investigations.
The alarm was raised immediately and the operational response was rapid and coordinated. Thanks to the joint work of the investigators of the Public Security Police Station of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and with the fundamental support of the Traffic Police Detachment of that centre, the suspects were identified and followed along the road network.
The decisive raid took place at the motorway junction, where the officers managed to stop the two before they could lose their tracks. An intervention that put an end to the escape and above all to the possibility of dispersing the loot.
Conducted to the offices of the police station, the two were subjected to a search, the outcome of which fully confirmed the accusation: all the stolen goods stolen from the old woman were in fact seized and returned to the victim.
Having completed the formalities, the two suspects, respectively he, born in 1993, and she, born in 1989, were arrested and transferred to the prisons of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto and Messina, where they will remain at the disposal of the Judicial Authority awaiting immediate judgement.