A student tried to scam the Sicilian government for €180,000, by submitting 2,600 boarding passes, in some cases claiming to take three flights at once. Say what?!? Thanks to aeroTELEGRAPH for reporting this, and Klaus for flagging it.
Sicily subsidizes airline tickets for residents
Sicily is remote, and isn’t connected by road to “mainland” Italy. That poses a challenge for Sicily’s nearly five million residents. So to mitigate this issue, the government has a program that subsidizes ferry and airline tickets.
Residents of Sicily receive a discount of at least 25% on select flights within Italy, up to a maximum of €75. In some cases, the discount can be up to 67%, including for low income households, people with disabilities, and students. The process of submitting reimbursement is easy — you just upload your boarding pass and ticket, and the amount is transferred to your account.
For what it’s worth, the regional government spent around €33 million on this scheme in 2024. So it’s quite a bit of money, but it’s obviously not used that much (when you compare the size of the population to the amount).
Student claims to take 2,600 flights in nine months
A 26-year-old Sicilian student is now facing serious consequences, after it was determined he fraudulently used this system, in a major way. How? Well, he ended up submitting refund requests with the Sicilian government for 2,600 flights over a period of just nine months. For example, he claimed to take 892 flights in October 2024 alone, allegedly claiming to travel on three flights at once.
The man submitted refund claims totaling €180,000, but he ended up being caught by authorities after receiving €86,000 in reimbursement.
So, how did he fake these tickets? He simply created fake boarding passes, which is easy enough to do if you doctor real boarding passes using basic computer software. It was later determined that only three of the flights he had claimed were authentic, and the rest were all a scam.
The Catania Public Prosecutor’s Office has now charged the man with aggravated fraud in obtaining public funds, plus money laundering. All of the money he got through this method has also been seized (at least he didn’t spend it all?).
Bottom line
A student got caught trying to scam the Sicilian government out of €180,000. The government has a system by which residents receive discounts on flights. He obviously determined that this system was largely automated, so he decided to submit doctored boarding passes to be reimbursed.
As is usually the case in these kinds of situations, he got greedy. Maybe he would’ve gotten away with it if he submitted a dozen boarding passes, but submitting 2,600 boarding passes, including multiple for overlapping travel, obviously aroused some suspicion. He’s now facing the consequences.
What do you make of this scheme?
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