The Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Reggio Calabria has executed the precautionary measure of the house arrest against three people and the preventive seizure of the total sum of 718,426.25 euros against 151 subjects Investigated for crimes of criminal association, scam against the state, false, replacement of person, abusive access to the computer system. The provision was issued by the investigating judge of the local court, at the request of the Public Prosecutor of Reggio Calabria, directed by the chief prosecutor FF Dr. Giuseppe Lombardo, together with decrees of personal and local search issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Reggina Republic against the three recipients of the personal precautionary measure.
The precautionary measures arranged constitute the epilogue of an investigation conducted by the Guardia di Finanza Group of Reggio Calabria, which allowed to identify – to the state of the procedure and save subsequent assessments regarding the actual and definitive assessment of the responsibilities – an articulated criminal association dedicated to the commission of multiple illegal conduct to the detriment of the Revenue Agency, allowing the suspects to obtain the undue perception of reimbursement Irpef overall of enormous scope. The investigations, carried out starting from 2019, originated from a report of the provincial direction of the Revenue Agency of Reggio Calabria, in which anomalies were highlighted on the compilation of some tax declarations. The investigative activity that has achieved has developed, among other things, through telephone and environmental interceptions, copious documentary acquisitions, banking investigations and analysis of numerous IT supports.
The modus operandi adopted by the delinquent organization provided for the acquisition of the access credentials to the electronic services of the taxpayers, unduly carpite (also through the involvement of public infideling officials) or obtained through the direct communication by the taxpayers themselves (sometimes unaware, sometimes compliant with what was happening). THEn this way, the suspects were able to replace the latter, to enter the relative statements, to manage the refund practices and to verify their successful outcome. The articulated criminal association was organized in a structured and hierarchical way. At his summit, the recipients of house arrests were appeared who used other “intermediaries” subjects who had – in turn – the task of “procuring” taxpayers to be involved in the described illegal operations, acting according to a precise territorial division. The aforementioned “intermediaries”, therefore, was entrusted with the task of recruiting the taxpayers and hardening, upon proposal to obtain easy money in the form of reimbursements, to provide their personal data, the credentials to access the Revenue Agency portal and the documentation necessary for the presentation of the fraudulent tax return.
More in detail, The taxpayers involved were “enrolled” between relatives or friends of the same procurers or in the context of entire homogeneous categories of subjects such as, for example, some fishing associations in the Tyrrhenian area, the employees of some state -of -participation companies and employees of certain companies operating in some Calabrian port areas. The criminal structure used, as mentioned above, also of public infidelity officials, one of them to the retired state, which, taking advantage of their status as employees of the Revenue Agency, worked to obtain the access credentials of the taxpayers to be made available to the criminal constituto. The organizers of the fraudulent mechanism provided to alter the tax return through different ways, such as:
– the indication, in the list of dependent family members, of subjects (spouse, son, son with disabilities) belonging to another family unit and/or in any case not attributable to the declarant, or of Italian citizens canceled by the registry of Italian municipalities and enrolled in AIRE (Italian registry residing abroad);
– the insertion of healthcare costs, often also of huge entity, non -existent and/or not justifiable by the declarant;
– the request for Irpef reimbursements in relation to withholding taxes suffered with regard to incomes for income received.
In order not to be identified, the leaders of the partnership adopted a series of precautions, such as, for example, the absence of direct contacts with the final taxpayers (in order to safeguard their identity) or the use of a network of non -existent CAF operators located on the territory or the opening of real collection centers which, accredited to national union acronyms, in fact proved to be fictitious and only services to transmission. of fraudulent declaration models. Furthermore, in order to reduce the risk of being discovered to the maximum, the unduly requested and obtained reimbursement was always limited to a sum of less than € 4,000 (limit beyond which the activation of the automated control procedures in the subject of income tax returns is provided).
The Truffaldino system – which over time had branched out on a vast territory of the province of Reggio Calabria, allowing the obtaining of illegal profits of considerable entity – had achieved a scope so wide as to attract also the attention of some gangs of ‘Ndrangheta, in particular of that of the Pisan called “I devils”, hegemone in the plain of Gioia Tauro. For each reimbursement not due, each person returned 40% of the perceived to the partnership, retaining the remaining 60% for himself. In this regard, sOver 1,200 unfaithful declaration models, relating to the tax years from 2016 to 2022, have been identified, which have allowed undue reimbursements for a total amount of € 718,426.25 (of which approximately 312,119.29 paid to the members of the criminal association), subjected to seizure with today’s precautionary provision. It should be noted that the criminal proceeding still focuses in the phases of the preliminary investigations and that the Resp