Theft of credit cards and ATMs, stolen from the elderly while they collected at the counters of their banks.

These are the contents of the investigation by the Carabinieri of the Provincial Command of Turin who, in recent days, have notified a 34-year-old of Romanian origin, already detained for other crimes in Padua, an order of custody in prison.

The man is held responsible, in competition with three other compatriots, two men and a woman, of twelve different episodes, which took place between June and September 2020 in Turin. The accomplices, recipients of a similar restrictive measure, have also been identified: a man and a woman are in prison in Romania for other reasons, while the fourth member of the gang is wanted.

THE INVESTIGATIONS - The investigations started with the complaint of a 69-year-old, who after having suffered a fraudulent withdrawal of 1,400 euros, found himself in his wallet after an operation at the counter an ATM card identical in model and color to his, but registered to another person.

Subsequent analysis of the security camera footage made it possible to reconstruct the modus operandi of the criminal group. In particular, a man of the gang simulated waiting in line to carry out an operation at the counter and picked up the secret code of the elderly victim he was taking. The accomplice, after throwing a banknote on the ground, attracted the victim's attention by pointing politely at the banknote making her believe that it had fallen. When the victim turned and bent down to pick it up, the man, with the utmost dexterity, replaced the ATM card still in the slot with another, very similar in that it was issued by the same credit institution and already the subject of a previous theft carried out with the same technique.

(Unioneonline / vl)

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