Mastrandre ein Ganove ?

Hello everyone,

I decided to write this in English to reach wider audience.

As most of you know - MastrAndre (***** in following) was a member here and other knife related fora or groups since about 2017. Consequently he was banned as complaints about his business practices started to emerge. I knew about his existence, but was never personally involved other than having a brief social exchange with him once I learned that he lives in Slovakia - my country of origin. However last post about him got me over the threshold and I decided to have a closer look. I spoke to several of those that were less then pleased ealing with him and a bit cleared picture emerged. He really is very gifted liar and seem able to talk his way out of anything. Once he noticed that I started to ask around he contacted me and I decided to let him talk and see what he is about. He mentioned several cases (especially those where he eventually delivered what he promised). He would come out with very credibly sounding excuses. Eventually the communication ceased. I did not see the point to continue it.
But googling around and trying to learn more about him uncovered a pretty interesting facts. Once I new his real name it got easier, as there are few Italians who lived long time in Germany and then moved to Slovakia. I always wondered why he did move there (well, his wife does come from Slovakia).

Then I found this article back from 10th of February 2013: Der ist absolut zufällig und hat rein gar nix mit dem Thema hier zu tun :

plus7dni.pluska.sk/domov/slovensko-chce-mella-vydat-nemcom-hladaneho-taliana-nemieni

Since automatic translation usually works poorly on more complicated texts, here is a translation of the most important bits.

• Photo on the top of the article shows ***** back in 2013 (he gained a few kilograms since then and lost some hair)

• Motivation for Plus7dni to write it was to compare the fact that: "We wonder that Belize refused to release Slovakian guy named Karol Mella to Interpol, but we refuse to release ****** ***** to German authorities".
  
• And the reason for the request was:Interpol located ***** ***** and his parter in Banska Bystrica. He was arrested on 4th of April 2011***** was convicted in DE for financial crimes (wage embezzlement and deliberate prolongation of concurs when his company went bankrupt) plus another inquiry was opened (peculation and other crimes)
  
• It turned out that slovakian penal code is not quite as strict as German, still part of his crimes in DE would be crimes in SK too. Still - the highes court refused to release ****** to German authorities. As a reason was give that "his child has a right to a father".So he stayed in Slovakia and could live as a free citizen. 
  
• Side note - also his wife was also being wanted under EU arrest warrant, but as a mother of a minor was not released to German authorities either.
  
• So while none of the ***** couple can travel to Germany as they would get arrested, nothing hindered them to live in Slovakia and even start 2 companies (though both were closed ex-offo in 2014)
  
• At the time this article was written ***** was in financial troubles because he did not pay on time social insurance and was a source of trouble to owner of the building where Manca was running a restaurant - again he managed to talke her to help him out but not to pay back
  
• Article ends with mentioning that at that time, ***** was renting a rather expensive apartment, but does not mention exact location

So - as you can see - you want to steer clear off any business with this person - he is a professional scammer and cheater. Already from talking to all the guys that did business with him - even in those cases where he finally did ship the knife they bought - it took him ages, endless excuses, dubios shipping practices (including shipping fraud - shipping empty envelopes to wrong US address and then claiming insurance money).

I would like to see this information being spread in the community, so that his chances of scamming another people can be minimised.


EIDT: I completely forgot to mention that on top of all the above the *****'s IG Profile ********** has quite incredible number of followers - 27.000 - however very most of these are bots of fake accounts. But that is another part of him trying to deceive people.

Regards, Wastl.