He pulled off the fake carabiniere scam. Then he hid the loot – jewels, mostly – in a Nutella jar, tried to escape from Sardinia by boarding a ship in port, but was discovered and stopped by the agents of the Flying Squad of the Cagliari Police Headquarters: the arrest was made against a forty-five-year-old Neapolitan, accused of aggravated extortion.
The victim of the scam, which follows a tried and tested pattern, is an elderly woman living in the center of Cagliari. She was home alone because someone, shortly before, had made her daughter go out with a ruse: she had been informed via phone call that her car's license plate had been cloned and used on a vehicle used to carry out a robbery. For this reason, she had been summoned to the police station by the Carabinieri.
Once the camp was cleared, an individual who pretended to be a carabiniere showed up at the old woman's door: he threw her into a panic by explaining that her daughter had caused a serious car accident and that if she, the mother, did not pay, she would end up in prison. Typically the ruse involves the arrival of a second accomplice, a self-styled lawyer, who promises to sort things out but is actually ready to grab everything.
The woman, thrown into panic, handed over jewelry and money. The scammer disappeared.
Shortly after, awareness came, with the call to the Police Headquarters switchboard to report what had just happened. The Hawks of the Mobile moved immediately, with a stakeout service at the port. While the investigators were near the checkpoint, the port security personnel, pre-alerted, reported a person whose luggage had been suspicious when passed through the scanner. The bag contained products containing metal material.
The forty-five-year-old noticed that something was wrong and tried to escape. In vain. During the search, the police found all the assets extorted from the elderly victim a few hours earlier. The jewels were hidden inside Nutella jars and detergent bottles: 135 pieces, including valuable watches, gold coins, and jewels of all kinds that the officers had to extract and clean from the "delicious spreadable cream" and the liquid laundry detergent.
