Franco Malosso 'von Rosenfranz' has been jailed after building a fake Roman amphitheatre and charging visitors £35. The 69-year-old Italian conman claimed the site near Vicenza was the world's oldest open-air amphitheatre, with ruins of columns, stone steps and statues that he said were built before 393 AD.
Investigation reveals fake artefacts
An investigation found that the supposed ancient artefacts dated back only to the early 2000s and were made using materials including fibreglass and papier-mâché to make them appear old. Malosso had also created the lake himself.
Malosso told tourists elaborate tales of historical figures who attended his amphitheatre, including Roman Emperor Julius Caesar. He even claimed it was where Juliet Capulet, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, lived as a teenager.
How the fraud was uncovered
The fraudster described himself as a “philanthropist, entrepreneur and orchestra conductor” and managed to fool local government to the extent that the site was included in a tourism app funded by the EU. Malosso said he had discovered the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre after it was exposed in a landslide in 2005, and claimed it contained Neolithic, Greek and Roman artefacts.
Promotional material described the amphitheatre as “the oldest and largest, among the most spectacular in the world”. The elaborate fraud began to unravel when police started an investigation in 2016. Archaeologists concluded there had been no ancient structures and that Malosso had levelled the hill himself.
Further false claims
Rather than confess, Malosso made even wilder claims to mislead police, including a blog post in 2017 appearing to be from him, stating there were “at least nine murders” by the mafia in an attempt to “take over the amphitheatre”. The post also claimed Malosso had been targeted by the mafia and, despite being “seriously injured, escaped death”, while his three-year-old son “disappeared”.
In 2016, Malosso also claimed the amphitheatre had been restored in the 19th century. “An initial restoration project was carried out in 1870, with a second, more recent one between the late 1980s and early 1990s,” he told Il Giornale di Vicenza.
Sentencing
The legal case dragged on for 10 years. Malosso was finally jailed for charges of illegal construction, forgery of works of art, and production of artefacts without authorisation. He was sentenced to two years and four months in prison and a €3,000 fine, and ordered to clear the area.
