Italian man jailed for passing off fake site he built 20 years ago as ancient Roman amphitheater

A man has been jailed in Italy for fraud after charging tourists €40 to visit a fake Roman amphitheater he built himself twenty years ago, Euronews writes.

Franco Malosso ‘von Rosenfranz’, 69, claimed to have discovered the site, known as the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre in the north-eastern city of Vicenza, after a landslide in 2005.

According to Italy’s Correiere della Sera, Malosso told visitors the site was one of the world’s “oldest and largest amphitheaters” and dated back to AD 393.

He claimed that Julius Caesar had visited it on his return to Rome from Egypt with Cleopatra, and that Shakespeare’s famous fictional character Juliet Capulet had lived in an old church there.

But suspicions about his far-fetched tale began to emerge in 2016. Archaeologists called in to investigate by Italy’s Carabinieri military police discovered the “ancient” structure contained fiberglass, papier-mâché columns, rendered blocks and plaster statues dating from the early 2000s.

Malosso has been sentenced to two years and four months in prison for illegal construction, art forgery and creating works without authorization. He’s also been fined €3,000.