Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Milan, May 3 2022 - In recent days the local police carried out some checks in via Paolo Sarpi which led to the arrest of a man who had been reported as the author of clever thefts from passers-by. Furthermore, some shops specializing in children's clothing were checked, finding numerous items with well-known counterfeit brands. 
Both operations are the result of investigations by agents of the Anti-Counterfeiting Operations Group of the local police.

The officers, stationed for about half an hour in plain clothes along via Paolo Sarpi, where the presence of a man with a backpack who was stealing cell phones from passers-by, mainly targeting women, had been reported, identified a person matching the description. He had in fact approached a couple of friends, one of whom was engaged in a conversation on the cell phone, and was waiting for her to end the call with the aim, presumably, of committing the theft while she put the phone back in her pocket. Stopped by the officers, three devices (Apple I Phone, REDMI and Huawei) with a commercial value of approximately 2.500 euros were found in his backpack.
With the collaboration of some traders in the street, the local police then identified two of the three owners of the phones, both 19-year-old Chinese students, who had reported the theft and to whom the phone stolen a few hours earlier was returned in the same way. . 

The man is 33 years old, a Moroccan citizen with an expired residence permit and a criminal record for theft, robbery and drug dealing and has been reported for the crime of receiving stolen goods.

The local police also carried out some inspections of clothing shops in Via Paolo Sarpi which displayed counterfeit items of emerging brands particularly loved by young people. The agents of the anti-counterfeiting group seized the invoices which made it possible to identify the exact origin of the counterfeit items, attributable to an important wholesale distributor in Milan Lacchiarella, active not only in Lombardy but also in other regions of northern Italy. 

The investigations then continued in the warehouse and the search lasted three days at the end of which 4 thousand items of clothing including t-shirts and trousers were seized, with a commercial value of approximately 80 thousand euros. Among the counterfeit brands are Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Puma, Jordan, Emporio Armani, Off White and others featuring Japanese manga and anime characters.

The local police investigated four people of Asian origin aged between 45 and 50 for counterfeiting and receiving stolen goods. These crimes carry a prison sentence of up to 6 years and a fine of up to 20 thousand euros. 

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