Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

328.000 euros in goods and money recovered by the Special Interventions Team of the local police

Milan, September 22 2020 – Five people reported for circumvention of an incompetent person and money laundering against a woman over eighty and 328.000 euros in goods and money seized. This is the outcome of the investigative activity carried out by the Radiomobile Unit - Special Interventions Team of the local police of Milan, to which the activities were delegated following a complaint made by the victim's relatives to the PM Marina Petruzzella.

“Applause for the accuracy and speed of the investigations of our agents – comment the local Police Commander Marco Ciacci and the Deputy Mayor Anna Scavuzzo – which made it possible to stop these criminals before they squandered all the woman's assets. Scams and deception of the elderly are among the most heinous crimes, which is why it is very important that family members always stay close to their loved ones and are not afraid to report anomalies and ask the institutions for help, as in this case".

The story traced back to by the local police officers began during a winter holiday in Cortina, when MR, a lady in her eighties living in Milan, met DN, a 30-year-old Italian. The two of them begin a relationship that continues even after they return to the city and during which he showers her with attention, phone calls and outings.

Over time, having gained trust in the man, MR began to purchase Rolex watches, Bulgari and Cartier jewellery, Dior leather goods and Sony and Apple technological devices for him, for a total value of over 150 thousand euros. Gifts that went not only to DN, but on some occasions also to his friend of the same age LV, who was invited during shopping trips and who was reported in the competition. The thirty-year-old also managed to bring the victim before a notary, who was also reported in the competition, to have a donation of 120.000 euros registered in his name.

The investigations conducted by the local police also revealed an increase, on an almost daily basis, in MR's ATM withdrawals. The money was then used by DN for the purchase of valuable goods, for nights out at discos or in lap dancing clubs, for dinners in expensive restaurants with friends or evenings in luxury hotels with other people, or they were deposited into the man's bank account. In the space of a year and a half, therefore, the lady's assets were entirely depleted: money, bond funds redeemed and liquidated to him, assets and family jewels, which the woman wore or kept in the house and which he took possession of seized.

The local police investigators started by tracing the money flows and thus reconstructed the financial movements of checks, bank transfers and securities. After the first days dedicated to data collection, bank inspections, reconstruction of withdrawals, identification of sales points and luxury items purchased, the agents managed to ascertain both the current account into which the cash had flowed and the places where the objects purchased in the fashion streets were presumably located. From an in-depth analysis of the social channels of the people involved it was finally possible to trace faces, places, associations and movements.

The speed of the investigations thus allowed PM Marina Petruzzella to issue a seizure order to freeze 175.000 euros lying in a DN current account and to order searches in the places identified by the agents, in Milan and Cortina, during which the investigators managed to recover all the jewels cleverly obtained or stolen from the woman's home. Some of these were also about to be laundered through under-the-counter sales in the jewelery shop owned by the scammer's parents: they too - the 66-year-old father DV and the 64-year-old mother CM - were also reported in the competition.

Overall, money and goods with a total value of 328.000 euros were therefore recovered and delivered to the victim's family.

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