Chico Forti, pseudonym of Enrico Forti (Trento, 8 February 1959), is an Italian sailor and television producer. He has participated in six world and two windsurfing Europeans and won the Italian sailing championship, catamaran class DART (1990).

In 2000 he was convicted of murder in the United States. Forti has always declared himself innocent and the victim of a judicial error. A movement of opinion in Italy asks for a review of the process.

Biography
He lives in Trento until he graduated in 1978 and then moved to Verona to attend ISEF Higher Institute of Physical Education In 1990 he took part in Telemike and won an important amount through some windsurfing competitions, thanks to which he moved in 1992 in the United States.

He married Heather Crane with whom he had three children Savannah Sky (1994), Jenna Bleu (1996) and Francesco Luce (1998).

Sport career
In 1979 he started practicing the sport of windsurfing thanks to Karl Heinz Stickl (former world champion in windsurfing) on ​​Lake Garda. With Robby Naish he performs among the first in the world the looping (complete backward jump with the windsurfing board) in Diamond Head, Hawaii (1984) and performs the first base jumping from the top of the Star Pilot schooner to Molokini Atoll , Hawaii. An expert skier, he runs down the east face of the Palon, Monte Bondone (2090 m s.l.m., in Trento) with his friend Gianluca “Billy” Valduga (1983). Together with the Hawaiian Richard White he designs and produces the first windsurfing ramp (funboard) that will allow him to train and compete indoors (1984). He will be the first Italian to compete in the professional windsurfing world cup [3] PWA (Professional Windsurfing Association) in 1985. In 1987 he was elected Athlete of the Year by the Albatross Club of the city of Bergamo.

TV productions
A car accident interrupts the competitive windsurfing career in 1987. After a long convalescence, he began his activity as a producer of extreme sports films (windsurfing, snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding, jet skis, barefoot water skiing, wakeboarding, kitesurfing) and collaborator in the conception and development of materials for the sport of windsurfing. He writes numerous articles in specialized sailing sport magazines and in 1989 becomes head of Windsurf Italy. It promotes the World Festival on the Beach in Mondello for the renowned sailing club Albaria, collaborating with Vincenzo Baglione, the Olympic image of Italian windsurfing.

He was invited as a guest to sports programs such as Giacomo Crosa Record (1985), Jonathan – adventure dimension of Ambrogio Fogar (1987), Sport USA on the Japanese TV network Asahi (1985).

In 1990 he created the Hang Loose production company which he broadcasts on SuperChannel and later on ESPN. The Hang Loose program with its specialization in extreme sports creates the premises for the creation of Extreme Games, at the opening of which Chico participates as a guest of honor.

Judicial affair
In February 1998, Dale Pike, son of Anthony Pike, from whom Chico was buying the Pikes Hotel in Ibiza, was found murdered on the beach of Sewer Beach, Miami on February 15th. Chico is accused of being a part of this felony murder, a murder committed during the execution of a crime (a scam in this case, given that the accusation had set up a Forti fraud against his father Pike as the motive for the murder); in 2000 he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of “release on parole” (LWOP). He is currently serving his sentence at the Dade Correctional Institution in Florida City near Miami. Chico Forti claims to be the victim of a judicial error.

Ferdinando Imposimato, then his Italian lawyer, and criminologist Roberta Bruzzone presented a report to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Giulio Maria Terzi di Sant’Agata in May 2012, which contains the reasons for the request for revision. Even the next Minister, Emma Bonino, expressed the active interest of the Italian Government in the Forti case. Many show business personalities including Fiorello, Jovanotti and Red Ronnie have joined an opinion movement to ask for a review of the trial. More recently, the guys from Lo Zoo di 105 took part in the cause, whose presenter Marco Mazzoli, now permanently resident in Miami, made contact with Chico in order to give space to his problem and injustice in his radio program.

Currently the legal counsel for Chico Forti is the New York lawyer Joe Tacopina. In the US judicial system the request for a new trial can only be made by presenting unknown and unknowable evidence at the time of the trial, and able to modify the outcome of the same. All evidence that has passed, or could have passed, before a court is therefore inadmissible.

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