A fraud of considerable value was carried out in Milan against
an elderly heiress who belongs to a historic family of Lombard aeronautical entrepreneurs
, perhaps the most noble in the history of Italian flight, the Capronis.
The scammers, according to what was reported by the State Police, which is investigating the case, yesterday afternoon
telephoned the
88-year-old woman, who lives in a building near Piazza del Duomo,
stating that her son had been in a car accident
, which he had been arrested for reasons of traffic fault, and that 12,500 euros were needed for a release on bail (a case well known in the collective imagination for US films and TV series but which is not foreseen in the Italian legal system).
To validate the scam, the scammers had also given
her a second actor on the phone, who impersonated a marshal
and naturally endorsed the seriousness and urgency of the situation.
After putting the elderly woman in great alarm, the scammers made arrangements for a meeting directly at home to collect the sum.
And so around 3 pm yesterday a young man of about 25
showed up at the woman's house and had money, gold and a precious numismatic collection delivered
, all for a value that has yet to be quantified but which is believed to be around 4 million euros.
At the moment, the prosecutor Ilaria Perinu has been informed of the case.
Then the investigation after the formal denunciation of Mrs. Caproni will pass to the fraud pool led by the adjunct Eugenio Fusco.
The victim is
a relative of Giovanni Battista Caproni,
a great Italian engineering entrepreneur and pioneer of flight, who in 1910 in Somma Lombardo (Varese) founded Officine Caproni, which in the 1930s reached 50,000 employees and which went through two world wars (in 1946 the founder was acquitted of collaborationism for having supplied warplanes to fascism and Nazism) with offices in the United States, Peru, Bulgaria and Belgium, with 170 types of aircraft built and over 70 records in the aviation world.
Achille Caproni di Taliedo, now 85 years old, son of the founder, at the age of 73 was arrested for fraudulent bankruptcy of his holding company, after having fled to South America for years and been blocked in Germany.
Countess Maria Fede Caproni di Taliedo, daughter and historical heir of her father's coat of arms, had disappeared in Rome at the age of 84 in 2017. Today the Volandia Museum of Flight, which dedicates a themed itinerary to Caproni, is located in the same areas where the 'Caproni Ca1', progenitor of the Italian aeronautical industry, flew on 27 May 1910.
