Two held, two under supervision in Dâmbovița poaching investigation

The distinction matters immediately. The men aged 55 and 59 remain in custody; those aged 32 and 53 remain at liberty under supervision. Police have not explained why magistrates imposed different measures on the four men, who are being investigated for suspected poaching, violations of weapons and ammunition laws, and unauthorized use of a firearm. All four retain the presumption of innocence.⁠4⁠5

Moreni Municipal Police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau initially detained all four for 24 hours on November 12. Officers were acting under the coordination of a prosecutor from the office attached to the Moreni Court of First Instance. The men appeared before magistrates the following day, when the longer preventive measures were imposed, according to the Dâmbovița police statement reproduced by local publications Damboviteanul and DambovitaNews.⁠4⁠5

Investigators allege that the men repeatedly hunted without permits outside the built-up areas of I.L. Caragiale, Dărmănești and Vlădeni, using illegally held weapons and greyhounds trained for hunting. The account places that conduct between February 2025 and March 2026; it does not say the suspected hunting continued into November.⁠4

Police executed five home-search warrants at the men’s residences. They reported recovering four hunting weapons, more than 830 rounds of ammunition, 20 kilograms of lead shot and approximately 90 kilograms of game. Officers also took custody of 10 greyhounds, three off-road vehicles and six mobile phones for the continuing investigation.⁠4

Those figures describe an inventory across the searches, not a list of possessions attributed individually to each suspect. The 20 kilograms refers to lead shot—the small pellets used in shotgun ammunition—and is separate from the ammunition count. The approximately 90 kilograms is the weight of recovered game, not a count of animals or an established measure of the total wildlife loss during the alleged hunting period. The police account does not identify the species involved.⁠4

The searches drew support from the county’s weapons, explosives and dangerous substances service, the Animal Protection Bureau, forensic police and the Special Actions Service. That range of support does not, by itself, establish an animal-cruelty allegation or an organized-crime offense. The publicly described investigation concerns the suspected hunting and firearms offenses.⁠4

Mediafax separately identifies one of the men placed in preventive detention as Petre Ilie, known as Petre “Geamănu,” and associates him with the “Frații Geamănu” group. Its report describes scoped rifles and hunting dogs allegedly belonging to him. The police statement does not name the suspects, and the available account does not establish whether Ilie is the 55-year-old or the 59-year-old. His reported identity is not evidence of guilt, nor does it establish the allegations against the other men.⁠1⁠4

For the two men outside custody, judicial control—known in Romanian as control judiciar—means liberty subject to enforceable obligations. It is not house arrest. The practical conditions come from both the Criminal Procedure Code and the individual orders imposing the measure.⁠28⁠20

Article 215 requires a person under judicial control to attend whenever summoned by the relevant judicial authorities, promptly notify the appropriate authority of a change of residence, and report to the designated police authority according to its supervision schedule or when summoned. The public account of this case does not give the two men’s reporting frequency. It would therefore be wrong to describe them as having daily, weekly or any other specified check-ins.⁠20⁠4

The law also permits additional, individually imposed conditions, including territorial limits, restrictions on contact with designated people, and prohibitions on possessing, using or carrying weapons. These are statutory possibilities, not confirmed conditions for these two men. Article 215 requires the order imposing judicial control to state the obligations expressly. Without those orders, the extra restrictions remain unknown.⁠20

A bad-faith breach can lead a judge to replace judicial control with house arrest or preventive detention. That escalation requires a judicial decision; it does not happen automatically because an obligation is alleged to have been broken.⁠20

The 60-day period is also not a deadline for completing the investigation. Under Article 215¹, judicial control during the investigation may initially be imposed for no more than 60 days. The prosecutor can extend it if the original grounds persist or new grounds justify doing so, with each extension lasting no more than 60 days. The announced period therefore does not guarantee that supervision will end after those 60 days.⁠21

The investigation continues under the prosecutor’s coordination. The public accounts leave important matters unresolved: the reasons for ordering custody for two men but not the others, the defense responses, and the full alleged wildlife loss. No next hearing or decision date has been announced in those accounts. What is established is narrower than a verdict but significant for the suspects: two are in custody, two are under supervision, and police are holding the recovered items while the case proceeds.⁠4⁠5⁠1