A man who admitted to misappropriating €20,000 in sound equipment from three rental companies last month was traced by one of his victims using Facebook and word-of-mouth.
“I shared his photo online and started receiving information via telephone calls and e-mails. I eventually managed to trace him down,” said Dennis Pullicino, an entrepreneur whose investigation led him to a “shabby” caravan on the edge of Kalkara waterfront where the trickster was living.
The information was then passed on to the police, who arrested Stephano Montebello, 28, of Birżebbuġa.
Mr Montebello said in court that he had sold the equipment, which cost upwards of €20,000, for about €800.
He was granted bail against a deposit of €5,000 and is awaiting judgment pending a pre-sentencing report.
Mr Montebello, or “the rentals robber”, as he was referred to by another of his victims, first visited Mr Pullicino’s company, Transient Ltd, on June 12 to rent equipment under the guise of hosting a barbeque with friends.
“He let us take a copy of his ID card and signed a company release form. Everything seemed normal and he even haggled over the price,” Mr Pullicino recalled.
Mr Montebello returned on four other occasions for equipment between June 12 and 20 claiming the event he was organising had grown.
Once the rental period expired, numerous telephone calls to Mr Montebello went unanswered and the address shown on the ID card did not appear to be the one where he was in fact living, Mr Pullicino said.
A few weeks later, when Mr Pullicino noticed one of his generators being sold on trading website maltapark.com, he started his own investigation.
“I shared a copy of his ID card online and I started getting e-mails and phone calls from people willing to help, even from other companies he had done this to,” Mr Pullicino said.
Helpful citizens were not the only ones to contact Mr Pullicino. His lawyer, Leonard Caruana, said the trickster himself had called Mr Pullicino telling him to delete the photo “or else”.
Mr Pullicino believes the whole scam was well planned. “He even knew our friends’ names. Everything he said seemed so true,” Mr Pullicino said.
Mr Pullicino managed to stop the sale of his generator but remains without the rest of the equipment. “This is the peak season and most of my stuff is gone. I had to get other equipment just to keep going. He sold it for close to nothing,” he said.