Italian authorities are investigating two police officers in a suspected data trafficking case involving the sale of confidential information.
The public prosecutor in charge, Nicola Gratteri, said the officers are alleged to have accessed and sold sensitive information about footballers, businesspeople, singers and actors from official databases.
There was even a price list for the data, Gratteri said at a press conference in Naples.
Investigators tracked down the suspects after noticing suspicious database access by the two police officers. One of them is said to have made around 600,000 queries, the other more than 130,000. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the prices per access ranged from €6 to €25 ($7 to $30).
Investigators believe some 1.5 million unauthorized data queries were conducted overall. Other databases are thought to have been hacked by the criminal network the officers allegedly worked for, with the information subsequently resold through private agencies.
The investigations are also linked to a Milan-based company that has already been named in other spying cases.
