The Frosinone Traffic Police carried out a precautionary custody order issued by the GIP of the Court of Cassino against an on-line dealer of cars for car recycling and other counterfeiting offenses. The same was conducted at the Cassino prison at the disposal of the Judicial Authority and within five days will be subjected to interrogation by the investigating judge of the Court of Cassino. Another person was arrested in the act of crime during the investigation, while another 10 subjects were reported on the loose.
During the operation, 38 cars of stealth origin were seized in various areas of Lazio and Abruzzo and in particular in the provinces of Frosinone, Latina, Rieti and Pescara (Range Rover Evoque, Range Rover Velar, Range Rover Sport, Mercedes GLC, Fiat 500 Abarth, Smart Fortwo, Miny Countryman, Jaguar, Renegade, Nissan Qashqai, Audi TT, Audi RS6) for a total value of about 600 thousand Euros.
The investigations began in November last year following the seizure of a Range Rover Sport with a counterfeit chassis, resulting from a theft committed a few days earlier in the province of Naples.
The person found in possession of the car was a vehicle dealer in Cassino (FR) with some criminal records.
The investigations carried out on the trader led to the identification of the accomplices and to discover the ways in which the illegal activity was carried out, aimed essentially at reinserting the stolen vehicles into the licit commercial circuit.
Vehicles of illicit origin, stolen in various parts of Italy and abroad, in countries such as France and Germany, were acquired through branched knowledge in the theft sector of cars based in the Neapolitan area.
Chassis identification numbers were subsequently altered and false documents were formed attesting to the foreign origin of the vehicles, cloning the data of cars regularly circulating in Spain, Denmark, Poland or France.
Registration was then carried out in Italy through nationalization and subsequent sale using the channels offered by e-commerce.
In some cases the vehicles were supplied with original keys stolen directly from the production plants before they arrived on the assembly line.
Another vehicle supply channel was that of frauds perpetrated against Frosinone dealers through loans obtained in the name of non-existent people who showed up at the showrooms with false identity documents and with counterfeit pay slips.
Last January, during the investigation, a 57-year-old man who had come to a well-known Frosinone dealer to purchase a luxury Mercedes using fake documents showing the details of a doctor on duty at the hospital had been arrested in the act of crime Cassino hospital.
The agents of the Traffic Police, in the course of the investigative activity, also pretended to be buyers by contacting the sellers following the advertisements posted on well-known buying and selling websites, in order to trace and seize the recycled vehicles.
Some vehicles were identified and confiscated from the car showrooms to which they had been sold by the suspects, while those still in their possession were kept in hidden places and above all within activities not subject to specific controls in the vehicle sector.
The illegal activity carried out by the suspects did not have pauses even with the lockdown. In fact, some of them were also sanctioned for violation of the legislation on the containment of the Covid / 19 epidemic while they were going to deliver one of the cloned cars to a dealer.
Part of the seized cars were found inside a dairy in Terracina and others in a public car park behind a Cassino bar.
Some vehicles were seized directly from people who, in the meantime, had purchased them from car showrooms unaware of the illegal origin.
Given the complexity of the activity carried out and the particular subject dealt with, the responsibility of the Traffic Police Specialty, the investigation was coordinated by the PG Team of the Frosinone Traffic Police Section integrated by two units from the Sora Detachment and the Cassino Highway Subsections and Frosinone.
The contribution offered by other offices of the specialty and in particular of the road police detachment of Passo Corese for the activity carried out in the province of Rieti was remarkable.