Two people, who passed off as financial consultants and lawyers, ended up under house arrest, by order of the investigating judge Guido Salvini, in an investigation into a “complex and bizarre scam in the field of works of art and cryptocurrencies”.
From the investigations of the Milan deputy Eugenio Fusco and the prosecutor Carlo Scalas and the Gdf it emerged that a woman was duped for 125 thousand euros, which had to be used on paper in part for the purchase of 12 fake “micro-frames hidden in Leonardo’s paintings. da Vinci “and 32 ‘digital fractions’ of works by the painter Alina Ciuciu (unrelated to the investigation). The scam would have involved “200 customers”.
Francesco Colucci, 46, who passed for a lawyer, and Davide Cuccato, 49, who worked as a financial consultant without having a title, were arrested. According to the ordinance, carried out by the Metropolitan Operating Unit of the Gdf of Milan, the woman would have been “proposed to join an investment fund that had the purpose of disseminating an International Web Gallery by creating a digitized representation of the most important works of art. “. Each work, she was explained with captivating brochures, “would be divided into individual portions of which those who adhered to the fund would become the owner and the title of ownership would be constituted for each fraction by a ‘token’, a sort of digital token. whose value would have risen rapidly in a few years “, so they said,” up to tenfold ‘due to the automatic effect of the growth in the value of world art’ “. Three other people are being investigated in the investigation, including Aleita Khorochilova, “who appeared in her capacity as ‘commercial manager’ of the company Xchampion, according to him a holding company based in Singapore, founded by Asian tycoons, which was about to open a series of branches in Europe “. Other customers, about 200 in total, would have been duped with a mechanism similar to the “chain of letters” and the money pocketed with the alleged scams would have ended up in Switzerland. Part of the money invested by the woman, “amounting to 24 thousand euros, was allegedly destined for the purchase of 12 ‘micro-frames hidden in Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings’, discovered by an ‘expert’”, so-called “,” while 16 thousand euros would have been used to buy 32 Token Art of paintings by the painter Alina Ciuciu, sponsored by the well-known art critic Vittorio Sgarbi (unrelated to the investigation) “. The arrested are also accused of abusive exercise of the profession and Colucci also of “possession of counterfeit signs” (fake police badges), receiving of archaeological goods, such as a “Campania crater of the fourth century BC”, introduction and receiving in Italy of counterfeit luxury watches.
