Scam hundreds of fans who had purchased Vasco Rossi's 2018 tour tickets - identified a partnership of cyber criminals who had cloned the site of an important online ticket sales agency
After the great concert "Modena Park" in 2017 Vasco Rossi returns to the Italian stadiums, the following year, with the tour "Non stop live 2018", recording record numbers: 10 stages for a total of 455.000 spectators.
For many fans, however, the tour events reserved a terrible surprise. After months of waiting, in fact, they discovered that there was no ticket office where they could collect the ticket purchased long before on the internet.
There are about 1400 victims who, misled by the naming of the sites, believed they were on the official website managed by Best Union Company SpA, a Bolognese company that owns the vivaticket.it website, when they made the payment (as indicated by the site) of the ticket. On the day of the concert, having in the meantime received, by courier, the "qrcode" to be presented at the ticket office for collection, they realized, to their great disappointment, that at the gates there was no ticket office and that the code in their possession was not valid.
The Best Union Company SpA, the only company authorized to sell tickets for the concert of the artist in Zocca, following hundreds of reports of defrauded users, reported what happened to the Postal and Communications Police of Bologna who started an article investigation activities following which the investigators subsequently identified eight "clone" sites, created ad hoc to recall the graphic aspect of the official one, on which the registered trademark "Vivaticket" had been unlawfully advertised.
The number of victims, the amount paid for the tickets, the amount of the sums moved between the accomplices of the scam, suggest that the criminal proceeds for the sole fraud of false access to the concerts of the "Non stop live 2018" tour are attested on a figure well above 500.000 euros.
The investigative activity, coordinated by the Substitute Proc. Of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Bologna Dr. Luca Alfredo Davide Venturi, made it possible to detect how the websites, telephone sims and current accounts used to receive the payments of the false reservations for the concerts, were made out to "nominees" : a XNUMX-year-old from Albignasego (PD) and a XNUMX-year-old Moldovan resident in Fontaniva (PD) who owns a Milanese carpentry company. Enrollment in the commercial register was essential for scammers in order to obtain an agreement with credit card payment circuits.
In order to prevent other unsuspecting fans from falling into the same scam and stop the criminal activity, with a preventive seizure order, urgently requested by the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Bologna to the GIP at the Court of Bologna, the eight clone sites have been obscured : privatetickets.it, privatetickets.eu, vivaticket.eu, vascorossi.co, privateticket.eu, vivatickets.eu, privateticket.it and nonstoptickets.eu.
The Prosecutor of the Republic of Bologna also issued provisions of personal, home and computer searches against the two "nominees" during which it was possible to identify a further suspect: a forty year old from Sandrigo (VI) who was in constant contact with the real creators, organizers and main beneficiaries of the scam through the skype messaging platform.
The three suspects from Veneto were burdened by police records for "property crime".
The investigative activity, carried out through the analysis of the telematic connections to the current accounts used by the criminals, made it possible to detect how the mobile users used connected "cells" of the Sardinian territory. In order to preserve anonymity, the criminals, after various transfers of money from one bank account to another, recycled the proceeds of the crime activity in cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
The analysis of the financial flows and the evidentiary evidence gathered by the investigators have made it possible to identify the creators of the criminal project in two unsuspected young professionals from the province of Sassari.
Last March, the Postal and Communications Police Department of Bologna, assisted by the homologous Department of Cagliari, carried out two searches on the Sardinian territory on the basis of further decrees issued by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Bologna. organization.
In the circumstances, a tablet and some SIM cards were seized from the Sardinian suspects, two of which are particularly important for investigations. The two cards were, in fact, having "solicited", at the same times, the same cells of the national territory to which the sim data used for the frauds were connected, as proof that the two suspects had also had access to the latter and therefore of their responsibilities as creators of the criminal project.
The crimes contested by the suspects, at state six, are the association for committing a crime, substituting a person, disturbing the freedom of industry and commerce, counterfeiting the brand, undue use of credit cards and continued fraud.