He pretends to be a councilor and asks a priest for money to “help” a boy from Cariati: 36-year-old arrested

John

By John

Yesterday morning a priest from one of the city parishes of Cariati received an unusual request, which immediately led him to doubt the real intentions of his interlocutor. In a phone call received, a man, who identified himself as a councilor of the Municipality of Cariati, invited him to make a financial contribution to a child from their community, that he was abroad and needed money to return. All with the guarantee that the municipal administration would then proceed to reimburse the Curia for the entire sum, specifying that the amount could be made immediately available to the young man by paying it into a current account of which he provided the IBAN. All plausible if it weren’t for the fact that, due to the serious and unequivocal evidence of responsibility gathered, behind the whole affair was hidden what appears to be a stratagem conceived and implemented by a 36-year-old “Special Guard” of Public Security, resident in one of the Sibaritide centres.

In this regard, it seems appropriate to point out that this news is being disseminated to guarantee the right to the press and in respect of the rights of the suspect – who is still to be considered subject to the presumption of innocence pending the current phase of the proceedings, whose criminal responsibilities can only be ascertained through a sentence that has become irrevocable, ed. On the basis of what had emerged up to that point, in-depth investigations were immediately carried out by the Carabinieri of the Cariati station and those of the Operational Section of the Territorial Department of Corigliano Rossano, who operated under the investigative coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Castrovillari, directed by the Prosecutor Alessandro D’Alessio.

It immediately became apparent that the real Councilor for whom the caller had replaced had not taken any initiative to request the donation, nor had he ever taken on the burden of reinstating the money paid. From the context of the story it then appeared that there could be a scam behind it, a circumstance which led the Carabinieri to stop and arrest the person who actually showed up in Cariati and withdrew the agreed sum.

The identification of the arrested person made it possible to ascertain that he was a criminal subject to the “Special Surveillance with Obligation to Stay” Prevention Measure in the municipality of residence., which for this reason would not even have been able to reach the municipality on the border with the province of Crotone. An old acquaintance of the Police Force, who only a few months ago became the protagonist of a similar affair in Trentino Alto Adige.

The convicted criminal seriously suspected of the facts in question was arrested and placed in the Castrovillari prison, where he will remain at the disposal of the Public Prosecutor in charge of the investigations, awaiting validation of the restrictive measure. The measure adopted demonstrates how the attention of the Carabinieri of the Territorial Department and the Prosecutor’s Office continues to remain high towards combating scams carried out against the most vulnerable people.