A 52-year-old from Acri working in a patronage was the director of a serial system of falsification of documentation then used to obtain welfare and social security benefits. The man has been placed under house arrest and searches are underway which have revealed considerable financial resources to be quantified. The system involved the use of health documentation artfully created by the 52-year-old, apparently issued by public health facilities even operating outside the region, then attached to the appeals presented to the Civil Court of Cosenza, labor section.
The false documentation was aimed at misleading the expert appointed by the judge for the purposes of ascertaining the health conditions of the people who turned to the 52-year-old to obtain social security and welfare benefits, such as civil disability or carer’s allowance. The man is accused of false material committed by a private individual in a public document, procedural fraud and false expert opinion by induction, in order to obtain the provision of social security or welfare benefits. At the same time, an emergency preventive seizure order was carried out, issued by the prosecutor, for the total sum of 1,554,763.94 euros for social security benefits which, according to the accusation, were unduly received by numerous individuals. There are over 100 people under investigation and around forty appeals for which the 52-year-old allegedly produced false documentation to attach to the documents. In other cases the anomalies were highlighted before the labor judge and were not successful and were reported to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The investigations refer to the last three years and the appeals were all made in the province of Cosenza. «It was a proven system – explained the Cosenza prosecutor Vincenzo Capomolla – which used totally false documents. Since it is a system aimed at obtaining social security benefits, there have been beneficiaries and in other cases there have not, but at the moment they are still being paid close attention and the investigations are continuing in this direction for further investigation”.