The 31 people involved in the “Scam city” investigation by the Crotone Prosecutor’s Office risk ending up on trial, which would have shed light on three alleged criminal groups, autonomous and capable of collaborating with each other, which between 2022 and 2024 from Crotone would have deceived dozens of victims throughout Italy with online commerce scams. Prosecutor Matteo Staccini has asked for them to be sent to trial. The suspects will have to appear in a preliminary hearing on October 30th before the Gup of the Court of Crotone, Elisa Marchetto. Criminal association, fraud, receiving stolen goods, self-laundering and impersonation are the crimes contested for various reasons.
The operation, which began between last March and May with the seizures of assets and ten precautionary measures carried out by the police, defeated an alleged ring of false sales on the web of agricultural tractors, mini-excavators, swimming pools, pellets, mopeds and electric minicars. The investigations began in 2022, when an Army patrol stopped a car in which Armando Covelli, believed to be the leader of two of the three dismantled organizations, was. Just before stopping, the passengers threw two cell phones out of the window, which were later found by a passerby. And from the analysis of those phones the activism of the three criminal associations dedicated to computer fraud emerged. Furthermore, the associates would also have enlisted the so-called “money mules”, often drug addicts, who for a little money lent their identity to register the current accounts into which the money paid by unsuspecting buyers attracted by the advantageous prices of the products flowed.
According to the investigators, the first group would have been directed by Armando Covelli and Luca Caporali; the second by Armando Covelli, Salvatore Lombardo and Daniele Pugliese; and the third by Salvatore Lombardo and Carmelo Iembo.
The 31 suspects for whom the prosecutor requested to be sent to trial:
Luca Caporali, Armando Covelli, Carmelo Iembo, Salvatore Lombardo, Daniele Pugliese, Pierdomenico Rizzuto, Marcello Ruperti, Domenico Scolieri, Francesco Tallarico, Giustina Debora Marzia Leto, Marco Liguori, Luca Laino, Alessandra De Santis, Francesco Porto, Salvatore Covelli, Pasquale Pio Cosco, Ermenegildo Andrea Misticoni, Giancarlo Rago, Giuseppe Cariano, Luigi Marino, Francesco Pupa, Michele Liotti, Luca Screnci, Manuela Macrì, Antonio Simeri, Giuseppe Aiello, Emanuela Grisi, Riccardo Cristarella, Davide Agrillo, Norman Sem and Debora D’Agostino. They are defended, among others, by lawyers Giovanni Ettore Sipoli, Roberto Coscia, Giovanni Allevato, Fabrizio Salviati, Sergio Rotundo, Aldo Truncè, Mario Nigro, Pasquale Lepera, Gianluca Marino and Teresa Procopio.