Take a look at those pictures once and tell me if you can really say that they are not real? The one on the top is the real deal but the one at the bottom is the one which is going around in the market claiming to be one. Italian Police have busted a fake Ferrari racket and apparently it is a multi-million dollar industry running across the globe. The amazing thing is that the fake Ferrari makers are really talented blokes who could craft the fake one as close to the real thing as it gets.
Undercover officers worked in backstreet garages across Italy stretching from Milan in the north to Rome in the south and the main “production line” at Agrigento and Palermo on the Mob stronghold of Sicily. The operation was led by Palermo-based General Francesco Carofiglio, from Italy’s Customs and Excise fraud squad. Twenty-one of the fake cars were seized in Palermo and were put together using parts salvaged from stolen cars and write-offs. The cars are skillfully made from old American Pontiacs and the look as well as the real ones too.
The sales were being made on the internet and the cops monitored online car sales sites to keep an eye on where these fake cars were going. (There is another reason why I never ever trust transactions on the net). The buyers were mainly businessmen or industrialists who were fully aware they were fake but could not afford or did not want to pay the genuine prices. (Real cheap guys, if you crash them and loose you life, then to hell with the pride of owning a Ferrari).
They were selling dozens each month and making millions of Euro a year. It was a very well run Mafia operation and those arrested are being held on suspicion of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and receiving stolen goods. General Carofiglio said that one of the cars seized was a flaming red F360 no longer produced and which was selling at 100,000 Euro; half of what it should cost. Dozens of false Ferraris have been seized by the police in Italy over the last 25 years. The fact is not that someone mimicked a Ferrari, but that you are compromising on your life in regards to safety. It is the guys who bought them knowing that they were fakes that must be put behind bars first.
