After two years of investigation, with 80 charges and 70 under investigation for fraud and person substitution, the investigation of the Computer and Telematic Crimes Unit of the Milan local police has brought to light a round of false accounts for the rental of car sharing cars from the Enjoy fleet.
The investigation started on New Year’s Eve 2020, when local police officers intervened to investigate a car accident, not serious, in which a Fiat 500 from the Enjoy fleet was involved which had hit some parked vehicles. The driver and the passengers of the Fiat 500 had escaped abandoning the vehicle, from here some investigations had started which revealed that the account used for the rental had been created using the personal data of a person totally unaware of the facts. With the collaboration of Eni’s Security office, it was possible at that point to extend the investigation and trace an Italian citizen of North African origin, BS, residing in the area where the accident occurred, who had generated and managed about 220 car sharing service account.
Local police have reconstructed the scam. The driving licenses needed to activate the account were found on the Internet, copying the data of people who, recklessly, posted photos of their driving license on social networks. The telephone number to receive the pin, necessary to activate the car sharing account, was provided to BS by his acquaintances or attributable to false numbers. The credit cards used to pay for the rental were “virtual payment cards” associated with BS’s “physical card”. During the investigation it emerged that the Sanctioning Procedures Unit of the Local Police had also developed a parallel activity, following a series of appeals to administrative sanctions notified to subjects who had been able to demonstrate that they were not drivers and / or responsible for the rental at the time the violation was ascertained.
The unmasked criminal phenomenon is particularly dangerous since the cars driven by persons who are not immediately identifiable could be used both for committing crimes and by people without a driving license and perhaps of a minor age. Following the investigative activity, Eni changed the methods for activating the account for the use of its car sharing fleet.