Florence cathedral managers fall prey to €1.5-million e-mail fraud
ROME — Italian police said on Thursday they had broken up an international criminal organization that had swindled some €30 million ($35.2 million) from victims including the cultural body that manages Florence’s artistic monuments.
Prosecutors in the northern city of Brescia issued warrants for the arrest of 10 people including Italian, Nigerian, Albanian, and Chinese nationals accused of money laundering and issuing false invoices.
They launched the investigation after the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, a non-profit organization that manages Florence cathedral and other city landmarks, reported that it had been the victim of an e-mail scam.
Intercepting e-mail correspondence, criminals posed as the company that carried out restoration and conservation work for the Opera and received nearly €1.8 million from it, a police statement said.
Authorities managed to retrieve about €300,000, leaving the organization short of almost €1.5 million.
Their broader investigation uncovered a growing ring of loan-sharking and money laundering by Chinese criminal organizations in Italy, said Brescia’s Chief Prosecutor Francesco Prete.
“Chinese money laundering is taking on worrying dimensions because we can’t understand what the source of the cash supply is,” he said at a news conference.
None of the people arrested or being sought by police were named. — Reuters
