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5 CAS employees and a computer scientist were suspended. For months they would have transformed the motorway toll booths into a parallel source of personal gain, exploiting the role of public service workers and a mechanism that was as simple as it was, according to investigators, tested.
For this reason, the investigating judge of Termini Imerese, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, ordered six precautionary interdictory measures: five employees of the Consorzio Autostrade Siciliane (CAS) were suspended from service for six months, while an employee of a private company was banned from carrying out his professional activity for the same period.
This morning the Termini Imerese prosecutor Angelo Cavallo issued a note to facilitate the emergence of similar cases and invite citizens to collaborate in the reporting activity, but also to “remedy some serious inaccuracies made, including by institutional subjects, interested in various capacities in the matter”.
The operation – the note explains – was carried out by the Palermo Traffic Police as part of an investigation that revolves around the collections at the Buonfornello, Cefalù and Castelbuono toll booths along the A20 Palermo-Messina motorway. At the center of the investigations are alleged episodes of embezzlement which, according to the reconstruction of the Prosecutor’s Office, were committed between November 2025 and January 2026.
The numbers reported in the provision describe a picture considered by the investigators to be particularly significant: 13, 18, 24, 103 and 108 episodes of embezzlement are accused respectively of the five debt collectors. The IT technician, an employee of the company in charge of maintaining the toll collection systems, is instead accused of 33 episodes in collaboration with two of the toll collectors.
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The investigation started from a complaint from the CAS itself, which had detected anomalies in the cash flow. Internal checks revealed a disproportion between the number of recorded transits and the sums actually paid into the organisation’s coffers. Hence the start of investigations entrusted to the Traffic Police, which used environmental interceptions and video recording systems installed in the toll booths.
According to the investigative reconstruction, the system would have been based on the replacement of the ticket handed over by the motorist. The toll collector would have collected the money owed for the toll but, instead of registering the correct title, he would have entered a different one, relating to a route of a much lower amount and previously kept for this very purpose. The authentic ticket would then be demagnetized and thrown away.
In this way the difference between the sum paid by the user and that resulting from the system would end up in the pockets of the suspects. In some cases, again according to what emerges from the documents, an automatic lane was even deactivated to convey more traffic towards the station manned by the operator, thus increasing the opportunities to put the alleged fraudulent mechanism into practice.
The investigating judge speaks of a “consolidated modus operandi” and underlines how the ascertained conduct represents only part of a phenomenon which, due to its methods and continuity, would have allowed the appropriation of sums of money over time. The amounts charged to the individual suspects range from just under one hundred euros to over eight hundred euros over the approximately three months covered by the investigation.
All the suspects, interviewed during preliminary interrogations, availed themselves of the right not to respond.
The CAS had called a press conference late in the morning, which was canceled due to “institutional commitments”.