According to INPS and INAIL, he was entitled to disability benefits due to total blindness. According to the finance police of the Vicenza provincial command, who conducted cross-checks and tailed him, he pruned hedges with scissors and hedge trimmers, tended the garden, selected fruit at the market, and paid in cash, carefully withdrawing the money from his wallet . Total darkness is far from it.
Hence the complaint to the Vicenza Public Prosecutor's Office for fraud against the State.
According to investigations, the man, a 70-year-old, had been unduly receiving benefits and subsidies intended for the blind for more than fifty years, amounting to more than one million euros .
The operation stems from cross-referencing data on welfare recipients with tax databases. For two months, the Guardia di Finanza (Fiamme Gialle) of Arzignano (Vicenza) monitored the man through tailing and video recording, reconstructing how he had been receiving pensions and attendance allowances for total blindness since 1972.
The investigation concluded with a tax audit that resulted in the taxation of over €200,000 in alleged illicit proceeds, equivalent to the income unduly received by the seventy-year-old over the last five years, a period for which an assessment can still be made.
