Anthony M. Quattrone
The Carabinieri have arrested 56 people in Naples who have been accused of fraudulently receiving invalidity pensions for many years. Some of the fake invalids have been arrested while they were driving cars, although they were receiving a pension for suffering from blindness. One of the “blind” was also observed by the police while he was reading a newspaper in a cue at the post office, while another was counting money received from a customer at her lingerie stand at the market.
The investigation that led to the arrest of the fake invalids started in 2007, when city officials noted that some documentation supporting the requests for invalidity pensions appeared to be false. The Carabinieri have ascertained that the false documentation was produced mainly in the Pallonetto area in the S. Ferdinando neighborhood, where an unusual concentration of invalids had requested a pension over the past three years. The false documents included both medical and administrative papers.
According to “Il Mattino”, the social security system has paid over a million euro (approximately 1.5 million dollars) to fake invalids in Naples over the past three years. Some of the fraudulent invalids had the photographs on their identity cards touched up to widen the pupil of the eyes, in an attempt to “appear” blind. While the public prosecutor has accused the fake invalids of fraud, the investigators are conducting an inquiry to ascertain whether there has been collusion on the part of corrupt civil servants in granting the pensions to the false invalids.
“La Repubblica” reports that a young local politician might be behind the false invalidity pensions in the Pallonetto area. According to some residents, the young politician promised jobs and false invalidity pensions in exchange for votes. The Pallonetto, which is immediately behind the waterfront area hosting the major hotels on the waterfront, was known as a major center for cigarette contraband. With the recent dissolution of the contraband market, the Pallonetto has lost one of its major sources of revenue, and both the official and unofficial unemployment statistics have risen.