Ovidiu Andronache walked out of a Venice-area prison on 18 September, ending nearly four weeks of incarceration caused by a mistaken-identity alert. “The nightmare is over,” said the 42-year-old Romanian tourist. He added that he would “gladly return to Caorle someday” because his family enjoyed their stay.
Andronache, his wife Marieta, and their three daughters had arrived in the Adriatic resort town on 24 August to celebrate her birthday. A routine transmission of hotel guest data flagged his name as matching that of a Romanian convicted in absentia for a 2012 aggravated theft. Plain-clothes officers approached him during breakfast, asked for identification, then handcuffed and drove him to the station. “They had only his photo, his fingerprints, my name, and my date of birth,” he told Digi24, insisting he had never been in Italy at the time of the crime.
Unable to speak Italian, the tourist was placed in custody. Court-appointed lawyer Stefano De Rosa soon took over the case. Police warned the detainee that “the lawyer we appointed for you did not do his job,” Andronache recalled, according to Digi24. De Rosa later explained to n-tv that police, Carabinieri, court, and prison databases were not interconnected, forcing him to request records from each office. The material he secured—photographs and fingerprints of the real offender, 44-year-old Viorel Lungu, along with documents showing Andronache was in Romania on the day of the theft—persuaded a judge to order the release.
Court papers reviewed by TVN24 revealed that Lungu had received a two-year sentence, made final in 2020. Similar name confusions surfaced during police checks in 2014 and on two later occasions, yet officers verified details and released Andronache each time.
Inside the facility he shared a cell with six inmates. Knowing he was innocent helped him endure the weeks behind bars, despite what he described as vulgar treatment by some guards, he told Libertatea. Marieta visited daily and waved through the bars, Adevarul reported, while the couple’s daughters missed the start of the school year.
After regaining freedom, Andronache said he was transported to prison “in handcuffs, like a criminal,” yet felt “no anger or any resentment toward the Italian justice system or this country,” according to Corriere del Veneto. His only wish was “that this terrible mistake never happens again and does not affect anyone in the world,” he told TVN24.
The family has submitted a claim for damages against the Italian state, Adevarul confirmed, but planned to spend a few more days in Italy before returning home to Romania, Le Figaro noted.
Italian authorities have not yet issued an official response. Tourprom cited the case as evidence that incomplete data and disconnected databases can lead to wrongful detentions, especially in countries with heavy tourist traffic.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.