The Camorra turned a hospital in Naples into a source of money. Bodies transported by ambulance 'as if they were alive'

Italian police arrested four people on Wednesday in a case involving an alleged plan by the Italian mafia to infiltrate a hospital in Naples, stage car accidents to collect insurance claims and transport corpses on covered stretchers and oxygen masks to cash in on private ambulance transfers, according to The Guardian.

The investigation, launched on the basis of the statements of a protected witness, revealed a network of profitable criminal activities attributed to members of the Contini clan of the Camorra – the Neapolitan mafia – carried out inside the San Giovanni Bosco hospital. Prosecutors stated that “the operations were made possible by the organization's capacity for intimidation, a force that subjected both civil servants and citizens to its will.”

According to investigators, the clan effectively took control of the hospital's bar and cafeteria services, as well as the snack and drink vending machines located in the building.

Prosecutors claim that the Camorra “exploited an association that was active in the field of ambulance services, relying on the complicity of medical and paramedical personnel, private security agents and employees of other companies that carried out their activity inside the hospital.”

With the support of doctors and specialists willing to cooperate, the investigators believe that the suspects also set up a series of insurance frauds for the benefit of the Contini clan. These involved staging road accidents, recruiting paid false witnesses and drawing up falsified expert reports in order to obtain compensation payments.

Prosecutors say this cooperation was obtained through intimidation and violence. In return, the clan and allied families allegedly received illegal favors, such as issuing false medical certificates – including documents used to obtain illegal prison releases – and illegally transporting bodies by ambulance instead of authorized funeral services.

A doctor from the Emergency Department is accused of falsifying the discharge papers of a patient who had already died, so that her body could be transported home in a private ambulance associated with the clan.

Bodies removed from the hospital to avoid the morgue

Prosecutors argue that the system for managing ambulance transports operated according to a dark logic: deceased patients were illegally removed from the hospital to avoid going through the morgue. To bypass the controls, the body was placed on a stretcher fitted with an oxygen mask to create the impression that the patient was still alive during the journey home.

“Families paid between 700 and 1,200 euros for this service,” the prosecutors said.

And a psychiatrist employed by the local health authority is under investigation. It allegedly issued false medical certificates to people close to Camorra clans, facilitating the obtaining of judicial benefits and, in at least one case, release from prison based on fabricated psychiatric evaluations.

Among the persons against whom legal measures were ordered is a lawyer, accused of external participation in a mafia-type association. Prosecutors claim that he would have brokered the transmission of information to and from the prison environment, particularly in relation to monthly payments – known as tables – intended for the families of incarcerated members.