At the request of the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office, Carabinieri from the Pomezia Company have served a detention order on a 35-year-old Italian man. He is under serious investigation for the crime of laundering stolen vehicles, alongside other individuals who operate a car rental business.
The investigation began in February 2023 during a routine traffic stop. Carabinieri from the Rome Divino Amore station seized a rental Alfa Romeo Stelvio with French license plates, which was being driven by an Italian citizen. Subsequent checks revealed the vehicle had been stolen in the Campania region in June 2022.
The French plates were also found to be stolen, taken from Marseille, and originally belonged to a Fiat 500. Investigators discovered the car’s chassis number had been fraudulently altered with a sticker bearing a different number to conceal its true identity.
A complex investigation, coordinated by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office and conducted across the Lazio, Campania, and Calabria regions, uncovered an elaborate stolen vehicle recycling operation.
The suspects, who own a car rental company, allegedly purchased stolen vehicles. These cars were then “nationalized” and re-registered with the help of a registration specialist, who in turn delegated the operations to another agency. This process involved titling the recycled vehicles to unsuspecting company owners.
The investigation led to the identification, seizure, and return to their rightful owners of six vehicles. These included three Alfa Romeo Stelvios, a Smart Fortwo, a Fiat Panda, and a Fiat 500X. All the cars had been stolen in the provinces of Naples, Salerno, and Benevento before being put back into circulation in Rome.
Following the investigation, the Judge for Preliminary Investigations in Rome, at the request of the Public Prosecutor, issued a pre-trial detention order for the 35-year-old man from Boscotrecase. After the order was executed, the Carabinieri from the Rome Divino Amore station transported the suspect to the Naples Poggioreale prison.