Italian police on Monday arrested 22 people accused of stealing high-quality olive oil from producers all over Italy.
A further 41 people are under investigation for involvement in the racket, which was run by a band from Bari operating in Puglia, Campania, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Liguria.
Police say the thieves used syphons to steal from storage silos and transportation tanks at olive oil plants, aided by insiders working at the plants who were tasked with covering up the shortages.
On one job near Parma, the thieves set up suction pumps in a cemetery and used a 300-metre-long pipe to drain the silo of a local olive oil producer.
The band are thought to have carried out over 50 hits on olive oil plants across the country, selling the stolen extra-virgin oil on through a complex system of faked documentation.
Police confiscated olive oil worth five million euros as part of the two-year investigation into the racket.
