Proactive police response recovers €8 million of stolen pharmaceuticals in Naples

Police in Italy have successfully recovered a reported €8 million of drugs used for treating Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis after they were stolen in a fraudulent pick-up from a pharmaceutical warehouse facility in Ercolano, near Naples. 

The company was said to have been contacted by a man claiming he had been ordered to collect four pallets from the facility and asking how he accessed the premises. According to one media report, the following day, two men arrived at the facility and showed a warehouse worker a PC tablet displaying the order to be picked up. The four pallets were loaded onto the suspects’ vehicle, and they drove away.

However, after some of the pharmaceuticals company’s employees raised their suspicions about the collection, a check of the building’s video surveillance cameras revealed that the suspect van’s licence plate was registered to another vehicle. The Carabinieri were immediately alerted, and they quickly acquired the video surveillance footage and all other videos from cameras in the area before identifying the vehicle and tracing it to a rental contract. This led to the identification of two men who had previously been stopped and reported in Parma on 11 February after acting suspiciously near a pharmacy. The media claimed that, on this occasion, the two men were dressed in clothing attributable to a well-known import-export company.

After locating and arresting the men, one admitted to being involved in the theft and stated the drugs had been thrown away because they were ‘unsellable on the black market,” a report stated. However, further impressive police work tracked down the stolen drugs at a warehouse in Casalnuovo di Napoli, also charging the owner of the premises. The medicines were returned to their rightful owners.