The investigation is expandingillegal activation of additional services to the detriment of customers of the main telephone companies: the Special Unit for the Protection of Privacy and Technological Frauds of the Guardia di Finanza, coordinated by the Milan prosecutor's office, carried out searches and seizures at the registered office of WindTre, sending in parallel a report relating to the position of Vodafone to the Communications Regulatory Authority (Agcom) and Tim against whom there are no investigations at the moment. The Antitrust has repeatedly intervened on unsolicited paid telephony services for aggressive marketing but this time the investigation starts from the Public Prosecutor's Office.
According to what was reconstructed by the prosecutors, it was enough for customers to visit a simple web page to find subscriptions to paid services (so-called Vas services) that were never requested such as weather, games, gossip and horoscopes. The alleged scam would not have stopped even during the lockdown due to the coronavirus emergency.
The investigation, coordinated by the Milan prosecutor Francesco Greco, by the deputy Eugenio Fusco and by the deputy Francesco Cajani, sees 11 people investigated, including three WindTre employees (departed from the company in 2019), three employees and a consultant of the aggregator Pure Bros, a partner of an advertising agency and three developers of a company registered in Dubai. During the investigation, 12 million euros were also subject to preventive seizure.
Among the hypotheses of crime include computer fraud to the detriment of consumers, illegal intrusion into the computer system and attempted contractual extortion.
With computer fraud, such as that reconstructed by the Milan prosecutor's office in the context of paid services with debit on telephone accounts, "many are hit for little money. But, by doing the multiplications, the figures that are reached are much higher than those of the biggest scams. The profits that can be achieved with these mechanisms are much more conspicuous than those achievable through traditional scams, even those considered millionaires", explained the deputy prosecutor Eugenio Fusco.
"This - continued Fusco - is a matter that cannot be resolved only through penal repression, a regulation is needed which is then respected. For this reason we have informed the Communications Guarantor, because there will probably be work to be done even after the investigations ".
The Prosecutor of Milan Greco who opened the investigation also ended up in the shirts of the fronds, which he defined as "democratic". "The only consolation is that in this type of operation to the detriment of the consumer - he himself revealed during the conference this morning to which he presented the operation - there is a lot of democracy because it can happen to the public prosecutor of Milan as to the old man ”.
