An Italian woman has been sentenced to four years in prison after she drugged her coworker’s coffee for nine months in an effort to get her fired. Mariangela Cerrato, 53, is said to have devised the plan after learning that the insurance company she worked at in Bra, Piedmont, was planning to lay several employees off, Sky News reports.
- The crime committed here was very serious. While the victim didn’t die, the truth finally came to light when the drugged worker crashed into a tree while driving home from work. Putting that incident together with the fact that she always felt better on the days she wasn’t in the office, she became extremely suspicious of Cerrato.
- The suspect regularly encouraged the victim to have more coffee. Cerrato would say to the colleague, “Come on, I will bring you a coffee, what harm can it do you?” Because the colleague was already extremely wary of what the woman was up to, she kept a small sample of the drink and later had it tested.
- Her coffee had been spiked with benzodiazepine powder. Cerrato regularly spiked the colleague’s morning cappuccino with the powder, which “induces fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and muscular pain and my client’s work rate slowed after she drank the cappuccino,” according to Cristiano Burdese, the lawyer for the female victim, in a statement given to La Stampa newspaper.
- Cerrato was eventually caught in the act. After the victim alerted police to the substance in her coffee, police followed and then filmed the woman actually spiking the coffee. She was given a four-year prison sentence but still denies any wrongdoing and plans to appeal her sentence.
- The insurance company claims there were no layoffs. They said that at the time of the alleged drugging, there were no plans to get rid of any employees and in fact, they were actually looking for new ones. It’s hard to know what the truth is behind this case, but it is an intense one!
