Ștefan Remus Chiper

Ștefan Remus Chiper (born 1976) is a Romanian serial killer who murdered three people in Constanța from 2005 to 2006 for the purpose of stealing their identities and selling their luxury cars.

He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Early life Little is known of Chiper's early life, aside from the fact that he was born in 1976. As an adult, graduated from the Ovidius University of Constanța as an engineer, lived in Constanța with his wife and child, and involved himself in various business activities. The most notable of these was an unfinished real estate project situated at a beach resort near Costinești. In the past, he also invested in agriculture and a pawn shop, and reportedly owned three properties in Lazu, Eforie and Constanța, all of which he had to sell.

According to Chiper's later statements, he had numerous financial failures and mounting debts to two loan sharks from Mangalia, Stelian Cuşa and Cristian Samir, by the mid-2000s. As he did not want his family to learn of his financial failures and debts, he devised a plan to obtain luxury cars under false pretenses and then sell them after killing their owners. Approximately two weeks later, the car's new owner was stopped for a speeding ticket and questioned after authorities noticed that the car belonged to the missing Neagu. As the man did not know who that was and presented them the forged documents, police wrongly assumed that Bărbulescu had sold him the vehicle under false pretenses and then likely fled abroad. Just two hours later, police stopped the exact car with Chiper and a woman named Lacramiora Iordache behind the wheel. This was due to the continued threats of reprisal at the hands of Omer's relatives.

He was convicted of three counts of aggravated murder, robbery and forgery, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In addition, all of Chiper's cars and properties were seized, and he was ordered to pay a total of 360,000 lei to the victims' family members.

Since his conviction, Chiper has been detained in a maximum-security facility, having previously been incarcerated at the prisons in Poarta Albă, Tulcea and Slobozia. He has filed several parole applications after serving out the minimum sentence as required per Romanian law, but all of them have been denied, as the judges who heard his appeals ruled that he still posed an active threat to the public. The scheme consisted of Ionele smuggling the phones in via Chiper's brother, Ionuț Alexandru Chiper, after which Chiper and Niculescu would use them to defraud two elderly men by lying to them that their daughters had recently gotten into some sort of traffic accident. Ionele would also resell these phones to other convicts at the penitentiary.

The scheme was uncovered at some point, after which Ionele and Alexandru Chiper were charged for their crimes. Ionele was fired from his position was sentenced to 6 years in prison, while Alexandru Chiper made a plea deal with the prosecution – in exchange for a confession, he was given a more lenient sentence of 2 years and one month imprisonment, which would be suspended.