Two investigations, three proceedings and two convictions arrived with the plea bargain for a total of 13 months. A nine year long odyssey, all for a joke to a friend .

The protagonist of the story is a 46-year-old from Cremona, who subscribed to a friend - without his knowledge - a subscription to Disney 313 , the comic magazine dedicated to the relationship between Donald Duck and his legendary red and blue convertible, the 313.

The friend, the same age and also from Cremona, discovered that he was a subscriber when De Agostini sent him the first issue of Donald Duck asking for payment.

The man did not know who was the friend and filed a complaint against unknown persons: but it was not difficult to identify the person responsible, the clean-cut worker. For this reason the friendship was shattered , the compensation of one thousand euros did not mend relations. The victim of the joke did not withdraw the complaint and a procedure was started for the worker on the charge of substituting the person .

So, for Donald Duck's joke , the 46-year-old negotiated three months' imprisonment with a suspended sentence and he had to pay 600 euros in legal fees to the now former friend.

It does not end there, because to re-emerge from the trouble in which the author of the joke had gotten himself, he hired a lawyer he could not afford, so he decided to file an application for legal aid and filled out the self-certification. Other troubles, because the Guardia di Finanza discovered that the man in the self-certification had omitted one of the three jobs as a worker he carried out and therefore did not qualify for a lawyer paid by the state. Another procedure and a new ten-month plea deal .

If he could go back to that damn 2013, the worker surely wouldn't have done that joke.

(Unioneonline / L)