Made the scams “Hello father, hello mother” way of life. He was sentenced to five years

O accused, 44 years old, who will remain in custody preventively, was also condemned to pay 58,628,58 euros to the state and almost 13 thousand euros for damage to property and non-patrimonial suffered by several injured.

The man was acquitted of 35 crimes of qualified fraud, one of which in the attempted form, that he was accused by the prosecutor.

The collective court gave it as proof that on a date not cleared, but before 26 February 2024 and until September of the same year, the defendant “decided to send SMS messages through the WhatsApp application, posing as the son of the people to whom he was sending the messages, leading them, in error, to carry out bank transfers/bank payments”, convinced that they were making them at the request of those.

The man, who at the time of the facts presented himself socially as an ‘online cryptocurrency trader’, lived in Albufeira (Algarve), in a house for which he paid five thousand euros monthly income, with his wife and two minor children, and did not develop declared professional activity and the woman was not professionally inserted, according to the judgment to which the Lusa agency had access.

That passed “part of the day inside different cars that he rented, and inside of which he moved to different places, from where he sent SMS through the WhatsApp application to several people, in the pursuit” of his plan.

According to the deliberation of the collective of judges, the defendant activated, between February 20th and April 29th, 2024, 37 SIM cards on his mobile phone, the “which were used to create WhatsApp accounts” from which he sent commonly designated messages “Hello dad, hello mom.”.

With this activity, the man, who remained silent in the trial, supported his way of life, “at the expense of the deception and impoverishment of third parties, and with the corresponding illegitimate enrichment”, and made “investments in cryptoactives, thus preventing the tracking of the money obtained” from the injured.

In the judgment it is read that man “predicted and wanted, in a habitual, permanent and lasting way, to obtain his income, as he obtained”, with this activity, to which he dedicated himself “regularly and repeatedly”, obtaining through this means income to bear his personal expenses, because he did not have “sources of legal income that enable him to meet his needs”.

In the choice and determination of the measure of the sentence, the Judicial Court of Leiria took into account the degree of guilt of the defendant, which is high, as well as the high requirements for prevention.

In favor and against the accused also weighed, among others, the “non-existent professional environment”, age, high degree of illegality, lack of criminal record and good family integration, but also “the degree of severity of the consequences of the facts practiced”, the high number of injured persons and the form of action, “of easy exposure to hundreds of offended potentials”, taking advantage of the “fragility and natural trust resulting from the parental ties invoked”, in addition to the “value of the monetary amounts that took over each one of the offended people” and the “total lack of compensation for them”.