A text - 16.12.2015 I have recently listened to a very interesting program about usurers in Italy. It told the story of two people who, unfortunately, on some point in their lives, found themselves in trouble and desperately needed extra money. The first one's name was Luca. A few years ago he was running a shop in Rome. At first everything was going well. He hired some workers and was always able to pay them on time and had never tried to evade taxes. Then the financial crisis came to Europe and soon most of the small companies in Italy fell into trouble. Luca's shop wasn't here an exception. The banks couldn't help him, so he turned to a usurer. At that time he thought it was the only solution for his problems. Now he understands how terribly wrong he was. He borrowed more or less one hundred thousand Euro. Since today he has already paid more than four hundred thousand Euro, yet it has covered only half of his debt. How is it possible? All because of a very high interest rate that reached 15% every month. It sounds horrible and becomes even more scary when we hear Luca saying that nine out of ten shopkeepers in his quarter in Rome share a very similar fate. Even if he exaggerates a little bit, the scale of this procedure is intimidating. The second hero of the show finds himself in a very similar situation, although he's not a businessman. One of the biggest issues that concerns the usury is the fact that the victims are scared of reporting to the police. The usurers know a lot of dirty tricks to keep their victims' mouth shut. For instance they threaten their debtors' families or even devastate their property. The situation may even get worse if the debt is sold to a Romanian or Albanian gang. They have their own ways of collecting the money and won't stop at nothing to retrieve the whole sum to the last penny. When the debtor finally finds the courage to report the crime to the police officers, everything changes, though. The policemen encourage him to tell the whole truth and assure him that he is the victim and the usurers are violating the law. Unfortunately very few decide to cooperate with the authorities; approximately only one out of fifty. It is only during the search of the house of a reported usurer, that policemen find evidence connecting him to other, not yet reported, similar cases.