A man from Iasi lived a nightmare on vacation with his family, after being arrested in Italy because of an identity theft. It was not a mere confusion of name, but a serious error: a Romanian offender, caught after breaking several ATMs, used his personal data.
A Romanian on vacation with the family in Italy was arrested by the photo: Archive
Ovidiu Andronache went to the sea near Venice, together with his wife and three children, at the end of August. The joy of the holiday ended up the next day, when the carabinieri appeared at the hotel.
“They were civilly dressed carabinieri. They came and asked me, “We need your document to check something.” They took me so, with the light. And when I arrived in front of the hotel they put my handcuffs and put me in the car“, The man tells.
At the police station, he was told that he is convicted of breaking a ATM. Ovidiu found out that someone else had committed the crimes, but his name and date of birth appeared.
“They had only his picture, his fingerprints, my name and my birth date ”said the Romanian for Digi24.
Wife: “How can you arrest a man without checking?”
Marieta Andronache, his wife, says that from the first moment he realized that the situation will not be a simple verification: “How can you arrest a man?! You check! Are you really Ovidiu Andronache? Give me a document, call in Romania, find out. It seemed inadmissible to us!“She said.
The family recounts that he asked for help at the Consulate of Romania in Trieste, but the support did not come. You have to hire a lawyer, they waited for almost a month until he managed to demonstrate Ovidiu’s innocence.
A sentence for someone else
The problem was aggravated by the fact that in the official documents it appeared that Ovidiu had been present at the trial and even had his lawyer in the room.
“The judge said that this made Ovidiu’s release more slowly that, practically, when the sentence was given there he wrote that Ovidiu was in court, he was in the room with his lawyer. That’s how he wrote there, but he hadn’t been. Era someone who took his name“, Marieta explained.
The Romanian from Iași also remembers with revolt the words received from the authorities:
“They told me, after that, that I should find a good lawyer, that the lawyer who was ex officio did not do his job. And I thought: good lawyer, for what?! That I am innocent!“
Finally, after almost 30 days of detention, Ovid was released.
Trial against the Italian state
Now, the Andronache family has opened a process asking for damages to the Italian state for trauma and injustice.
“I did not imagine that in the European Union, in 2025, such an error could happen“Says Ovid.
