"He told me he loved me and asked me for 20 thousand euros." Extortion of lonely elderly people, 16 under arrest

Circumvention of incapacitated persons, extortion, receiving stolen goods and laundering of illicit proceeds.

These are the crimes of which a gang vanquished by the carabinieri of the operational department of the Provincial Command of Reggio Calabria and Europol is accused, who carried out a precautionary custody order issued by the investigating judge, at the request of the Locri Public Prosecutor, against 16 people .

Ten were placed in prison while 6 were placed under house arrest . The blitz started in Italy, Romania, the Netherlands and Germany.

The top management of the organization is located in Romania with operational bases in Calabria and Sicily. The victims were aged between 70 and 90, often alone, who were forced or induced to pay large sums of money.

“TRANSILVANIA” - The operation, called "Transilvania", was triggered in 2018 following the complaint filed by an elderly man from a town in Locri. The man had told the carabinieri that he had been surrounded by a young woman of Romanian nationality who, pretending to be in love with him, had induced him within a year to deliver them in cash or through payments via "Money Transfer" abroad a total of 20 thousand euros.

The illegal proceeds collected by the suspects would be around one million euros , of which 179 thousand traced through the transfer to Romania.

(Unioneonline / D)