seizures for 7.3 million euros; 13 suspects are due from San Marino
There Rimini Finance Police ah seized assets for over 7.3 million of euro, between movable and immovable property, a 13 subjects said to the promotion and implementation, throughout the national territory, of a sales structure, apparently based on network marketing, but – in practice – based on the recruitment of new subjects with the illegal “pyramid sales” system. Of the suspects, all uncensored, two are San Marino citizens.
The activity made it possible to identify in the Rimini area, the apex of a company’s sales networkbased in Milan e operating in the “door to door” sales sectorthat marketed food supplements. The company marketed the products of the US parent company in Italy. Sales to national final consumers, in consideration of the previous intra-community purchase, generated a huge VAT debt, never paid in the coffers of the Treasury.
From 2015in the province of Rimini the first group of sales representatives of the enterprise that has now come to be one pyramid structure made up of over 10,000 people. Among these thousands were both people looking for their first job, and who have invested – depleting them – their savings to pursue the dream of climbing the hierarchy of the sales structure, both people who, deluded by the project, havestraight abandoned the previous work activity; they are the real offended parties of the criminal association, often even unwittingly.
The recruitment took place on social networks, through digital platforms, but mainly in the course of events in presence and in grand style at very flashy and famous structures such as sports halls and meeting areas of large hotels, located in the main capitals and in the capital. During such meetings the verticals of their own success and that of the “ambassadors”, subjects who from scratch and in a short time had managed to climb the structure reaching its apex, outlining and describing the research methodologies for new “followers” and the results to which, consequently, it was possible economic results.
The company did not have operational structures in Italy, its core business – ie product sales – was made exclusively by sales representatives who were, at the same time, themselves customers.