Leiria Court sentences woman to suspended sentence for qualified fraud – Portugal

The Judicial Court of Leiria sentenced a woman to four years and nine months in prison for the crime of qualified fraud, a sentence suspended upon execution, and the payment of 25 thousand euros to two injured parties.

The sentence was suspended for five years subject to probation and the payment of that amount.

The panel of judges also upheld two of the four requests for civil compensation, sentencing the 41-year-old defendant to pay 36 thousand euros to one injured party and 9,360 euros to another.

According to the ruling, dated Wednesday and to which the Lusa agency had access, the woman, resident in the municipality of Leiria, met, before March 2020, a work colleague of her partner and “decided to take him to deliver him money.”

After the man told the defendant that he had a debt, “an unidentified woman went” to the man’s father’s house, identifying herself as an enforcement agent and saying she was there to “collect the debt”.

In the document, the panel of judges proved that the father, a “sick and fragile person”, out of fear that the execution would move forward, authorized several withdrawals from his account, which totaled 48,960 euros.

In 2021, the defendant contacted a real estate agent who asked for help to sell the apartment where she lived, but which did not belong to her.

The mediator contacted a potential buyer, who agreed to buy the property for 70 thousand euros.

At the time, the defendant stated that “she did not have the documents for the property, as her partner had fled to Lisbon and taken the documentation with him”, the ruling reads.

Initially, the buyer refused to hand over 35 thousand euros, but ended up doing so after the intervention of an alleged acquaintance.

Also according to the collective court, when the defendant explored a daycare center, she met the father of a child, noticing questions about the regulation of the exercise of parental responsibilities.

“Taking advantage of this fact and with a view to obtaining money”, the defendant convinced the father that the minor “was being the target of mistreatment by her mother, offering her the services of an alleged lawyer”.

The defendant asked for money several times, which the minor’s father agreed to, confident that it would be used to pay the fees, handing over 10,460 euros in total.

According to the ruling, the woman knew that she was “using an appropriate process to mislead” the buyer of the apartment, causing him a loss and achieving “a gain to which she knew she was not entitled”, also misleading the child’s father.

The group of judges highlighted that, at trial, “the defendant only admitted a small part of the facts and in a very mitigated way, stating that she had already returned five thousand euros”.

For the court, “true repentance for committing crimes is not enough with the affirmation of the same, it is demonstrated in acts”, firstly in the assumption of the facts committed (which the defendant did not do) and secondly in compensation of the damage caused (which the defendant did not demonstrate having done).

“In short, the considerations of general prevention are high, since crimes against property always cause great social repulsion and censure” and, “as for special prevention, the penalties to be applied must adequately make the defendant feel the reprehensibility of the her conduct, an essential condition for the defendant not to reoffend”, defended the judges when justifying the measure of the sentence.