Man sentenced to prison in Leiria for deceiving insurance companies with fake accidents in Switzerland – Portugal

The Judicial Court of Leiria sentenced a man to a single sentence of four and a half years in prison for the crimes of qualified fraud and money laundering, for deceiving insurance companies with false road accidents in Switzerland.

The defendant, 53 years old, at the time an emigrant in Switzerland, was sentenced to four years in prison for the crime of qualified fraud and 18 months in prison for money laundering, which, in legal terms, resulted in a single sentence of four and a half years of effective arrest.

In the ruling, dated Thursday and to which the Lusa agency had access today, the Leiria Judicial Court found that the defendant “deceived insurance companies and people” to “receive undue amounts, creating false schemes and deceiving the people”.

Among other aspects, the court listed a group of people, at the time also emigrants in Switzerland, who, at the defendant’s request or in agreement with him, signed false accident reports or communicated fictitious claims to insurance companies.

Of the 21 false accidents between 2009 and 2015 that the collective court found to be proven, in two the insurance companies discovered the scheme and did not compensate.

Another situation involved the recovery of a vehicle lease by the defendant against the payment of money to the two co-contractors.

According to the court, the man took possession of the vehicle for which no monthly installments had been paid and asked the leasing company to change ownership, which was not accepted, and also refused to hand over the car.

The court also referred to a loan made by a woman at the defendant’s request to buy a car which, according to him, after some repairs, he would sell it at a higher price and reimburse her, which he did not do.

This woman, who had a relationship with the defendant, also sent him her credit card to pay for a plane ticket, but he made purchases on the Internet.

For the court, the defendant “used part of the unduly received insurance benefits to pay a personal debt” he had in Portugal.

The ruling stated that, between 2011 and 2015, he made “46 bank transfers” of around 47,800 Swiss francs (49 thousand euros) from two accounts he had in a bank in Switzerland to his account in a bank in Portugal.

For the group of judges, the defendant received amounts to which he was not entitled, “misappropriating them, to the detriment of the respective holders”, and, “over time, he dedicated himself to illicit activities, deceiving third parties, to receive undue amounts, living off these schemes”.

The court also found that the defendant, by transferring amounts that were not owed to him to another country, “disguising the illicit origin of that money, was acting illegally”, as “he was making amounts of money that were not owed to him disappear with with the intention of making them return to legal commerce as if they were legitimate”.

According to the ruling, at trial, the defendant, with a criminal record, admitted “part of the facts imputed to him and admitted to having been ‘involved in a scheme'”.

“(…) It was possible to conclude that the defendant made several reports of false road accidents to insurance companies that never occurred”, reads the ruling, maintaining that the witnesses “were unanimous in saying that they did not have such accidents and other accidents were fictionalized with the intention of deceiving insurance companies, in order to obtain either the repair value or payment for the vehicle”.

The court decided not to suspend the execution of the defendant’s sentence as it understood that “it has become evident that the simple censure of the fact and the threat of the sentence are not sufficient to satisfy the needs of general and special prevention”.