The 44-year-old man had no declared income and posed as his victims' children over a series of text conversations, with the aim of extracting money by pretending to be in distress. The scam artist was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison for aggravated fraud, after the prosecution won in their the case alleging that he made his living not from cryptocurrency trading, as he claimed, but from running a so-called "Hi Mum" scam on a mass scale.
The defendant, who remains in pre-trial detention, was also ordered to pay €58,628.58 to the State and almost €13,000 in compensation to several victims for financial and non-financial harm. The sentence was handed down on Tuesday, 6 October.
He was, however, acquitted of 35 counts of aggravated fraud, one of them attempted, with which prosecutors had charged him.
The panel of judges found it proven that, on a date not established but before 26 February 2024 and until September that year, he "decided to send text messages via the WhatsApp application, posing as the son or daughter of the people he was messaging, leading them, in error, to make bank transfers or Multibanco payments". His victims were convinced they were acting at their child's request.
At the time, the man presented himself socially amongst friends and acquaintances as a well-off online cryptocurrency trader. He lived in Albufeira with his wife and two young children, in a house costing €5,000 a month in rent. According to the ruling, seen by journalists from the Lusa news agency, he had no legally declared occupation and his wife was not in work.
He spent "part of the day inside various hire cars", driving to different locations from which he sent WhatsApp messages to a range of people in pursuit of his scheme.
Between 20 February and 29 April 2024, the court found, he activated 37 SIM cards on his phone, which were used to create the fake WhatsApp accounts that he used to steal strangers’ identities in the "Hello Dad, Hello Mum" scam messages.
The defendant, who remained silent throughout the trial, funded his lifestyle "at the expense of the deception and impoverishment of others", enjoying a corresponding "unlawful enrichment". He also put money into cryptoasset investments, making it harder to trace what he had taken from his victims.
The ruling states that he "foresaw and intended, habitually, permanently and lastingly, to obtain his income" this way, which he did "regularly and repeatedly", having no "lawful sources of income" to meet his needs.
In setting the sentence, the court took into account his high degree of guilt and the strong need for deterrence. Factors weighing in the balance included his lack of professional footing, his age, the high degree of unlawfulness, the absence of previous convictions, and his strong family ties.
Against him, the judges cited the seriousness of the consequences, the large number of victims and his method, which was "easily exposed to hundreds of potential victims" and preyed on the "vulnerability and natural trust arising from the parental ties" he invoked. They also noted the sums he took from each victim and the "complete lack of compensation" paid to them.
Source: LUSA
Credit: Archive image
