Italian police on Wednesday arrested four people over an alleged Camorra plot to infiltrate a Naples hospital, stage fake crashes for insurance payouts and spirit corpses away on oxygen-masked stretchers to profit from private ambulance transfers.
The investigation, prompted by the testimony of a state witness, uncovered a web of lucrative criminal activity allegedly carried out by members of the Contini clan of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, inside San Giovanni Bosco hospital. Prosecutors said the “operations were made possible by the organisation’s capacity for intimidation, a force that bent public officials and private citizens alike to its will”.
According to investigators, the clan in effect took control of the hospital’s coffee bar and cafeteria services, as well as the snack and drinks vending machines scattered throughout the building.
Prosecutors say the Camorra “exploited an association operating in the ambulance services sector, relying on the complicity of medical and paramedical staff, private security guards and employees of other firms working within the hospital”.
With the assistance of compliant doctors and professionals, investigators believe the suspects also orchestrated a series of insurance frauds on behalf of the Contini clan. These allegedly involved staging road traffic accidents, recruiting paid false witnesses and producing fabricated expert reports to secure compensation payouts.
Prosecutors say cooperation was secured through intimidation and violence. In return, the clan and its allied families were granted illicit favours, such as the issuing of false medical certificates, including those used to obtain unlawful releases from prison, and the illegal transport of corpses by ambulance rather than through authorised funeral services.
An emergency room doctor is accused of falsifying the discharge papers of a patient who had already died, allegedly to allow her body to be transported home in a private ambulance connected to the clan.
Prosecutors claim the ambulance management system operated on a grim logic: deceased patients were illegally removed from the hospital to bypass the mortuary. To evade checks, the body would be placed on a stretcher fitted with an oxygen mask, creating the appearance that the patient was still alive during the journey home.
“Families were charged between €700 and €1,200 [£610 and £1,045] for the service,” prosecutors said.
A psychiatrist employed by the local health authority is also under investigation. She is alleged to have issued false medical certificates on behalf of individuals linked to Camorra clans, enabling them to obtain judicial benefits and, in at least one case, secure release from prison on the basis of fabricated psychiatric evaluations.
Among those served with legal orders is a lawyer accused of external participation in a mafia association. Prosecutors allege he acted as a conduit of information to and from prison environments, particularly regarding the monthly payments – known as mesate – destined for the families of incarcerated members.
