Interpol
ROME—Considered one of Italy’s most prolific fraudsters of the Nineteen Nineties has been extradited from Venezuela after being tricked into leaving his fingerprints on a recording of the Sixties hit track Woman From Ipanema.
Roberto Vivaldi, who fled Italy after being convicted of cash laundering and fraudulent chapter, had been residing beneath a false title on the island of Isla de Margarita off Venezuela, the place he was operating a vintage-record store.
In the course of the pandemic, Vivaldi began doing a booming enterprise promoting data on-line, simply as police within the Tuscan city of Prato reopened his case to attempt to monitor him down.
In late 2019, Italian authorities launched a challenge known as “Wished” to deal with plenty of harmful worldwide fugitives. The COVID-19 pandemic made their activity more durable with journey restrictions, however many officers concerned began focusing consideration on social-media profiles of pals of recognized criminals in hiding.
Working off a tip after recognized associates posted birthday greetings on Vivaldi’s pretend persona’s social media accounts on his precise start date—as an alternative of his false identification’s specified birthday—police put in an order for classic vinyl data—together with a Sixties recording of Garota de Ipanema by Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim—from Vivaldi’s on-line store. When the LPs arrived by mail in Italy, they had been had been lined with the fugitive’s fingerprints, officers stated.
Glad that that they had discovered their man on the lam, Italian investigators posing as file collectors traveled to Venezuela and pretended to be emigrating there, asking for Vivaldi’s assist to purchase a restaurant. The veteran conman, positive he might make a buck off the collectors, agreed to be the center man within the real-estate deal, even promising he might minimize corners.
“When Vivaldi confirmed up on the restaurant for an appointment, he found the Venezuelan police had been ready for him,” Alessandro Gallo, who led the investigation, informed theOccasions of London.
Police additionally managed to arrest a second Italian fugitive who had befriended Vivaldi. Flavio Febi, 33, wished for cocaine trafficking since 2017, had additionally escaped justice in Italy and was hiding out on Isla Margarita. He’s additionally been returned to Italy to serve out his sentence.