Rome's postal police obscure web pages and seize current accounts - two suspects
The health emergency taking place in our country is generating a strong push for citizens to make donations in favor of the most committed institutions, including healthcare companies and hospitals.
For this reason and to avoid that some attackers could benefit from the citizens' charity and "intercept" sums of money destined for charitable purposes, the Postal and Communications Police is carrying out extensive monitoring on the web.
In this activity, the presence of two donation campaigns was ascertained, unauthorized and unknown to the beneficiary body, reasons that lead us to doubt the real goodness of the initiative.
The first of the initiatives concerns a fundraising in favor of the intensive care of the Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, a center of primary importance, at a national level, to counter the ongoing health emergency.
The initiative, advertised on the well-known international platform for fundraising gofundme (which is absolutely unrelated to the offenses ascertained), had the objective of reaching the sum of 100.000 euros and, to make the initiative even more credible, within the web page wrongly reported the logo of the Lazio Region, the current President of the Lazio Region was also indicated as the reference person.
Another illicit fundraiser was published on a specific facebook page and, in this case, the apparent beneficiary of the sums collected would have been the San Camillo Hospital in Rome.
However, the investigations made it possible to ascertain that the hospital was not aware of the fundraising and that the sums of money donated would have flowed onto a rechargeable credit card in the name of a person from Rome.
For these reasons, the Postal Police of Rome, coordinated by the cybercrime pool of the Public Prosecutor of Rome, took steps to obscure the two web pages today, while investigations continue to identify further perpetrators of aggravated fraud offenses.
As part of the investigations, two people born and resident in Rome, a pensioner and his daughter, were also reported to the Judicial Authority, because they were responsible for the attempted illegal fundraising in favor of the San Camillo Hospital in Rome.
The suspects were subjected to searches and the men of the Postal and Communications Police proceeded to seize the virtual current account connected to the rechargeable credit card indicated for donations, an account on which, thanks to the timely intervention, no sums of euros were collected.
CONSIDERATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
To prevent such phenomena from discouraging citizens from making donations, it can be useful to provide the following information:
- Fundraisers for charitable purposes require authorization from the public body to which the sum is intended and which generally advertises it on its official pages;
- Although it is possible that an unauthorized fundraiser may actually reach the indicated recipient, it is important that the citizen, before making the donation, check whether the initiative is advertised on the official recipient's page, thus referring to the bank details indicated on the official page, which may be different from those of the initiative of which he became aware;
- In case of doubt it is important not to be discouraged, but to contact the offices of the Postal and Communications Police in the area (easily traceable on the web) or contact the official website of the Postal and Communications Police, reachable at commissioneratedips.it